


Facilis Descensus Averni

by Patrick_Diomedes



Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Skin Game AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:23:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4123932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patrick_Diomedes/pseuds/Patrick_Diomedes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Gates of hell are open night and day;<br/>Smooth the descent, and easy is the way;<br/>But to return, and view the cheerful skies,<br/>In this the task and mighty labor lies<br/>-Vergil</p>
<p>(Aka: A Skin Game fix-it fic with a lot more stuff drawn from Greek Mythology, and much less of the women getting screwed over)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ballroom Blitz

Like I told Ascher, there’s always  _something_.

Even as adrenaline raced through my brain, I wondered what to call these things. Fighting something nameless just…doesn’t work as well. If a hideous monster doesn’t have a name, that makes it a lot more terrifying. Because it’s either something new that no-one knows about, or something that hasn’t left any survivors to spread information. Whichever it is, people fear what they don’t understand. And a name is the first step to understanding something

“Freaking great,” I said. “Octokongs. It just had to be octokongs.”

Anna Valmont swore under her breath, her body tensing up like a coiled spring. But she wasn’t panicking. That was a good sign.

“Dresden?”

The octokongs came rushing toward us, using their simian arms and the tentacles below their waists to push themselves forward. I looked past them to the servitors in the catering uniforms. They were all crouching down, holding weighted saps or blackjacks. Every one of them was focused on Valmont. I grimaced. As disgusting as the octokongs were, the servitors were the bigger problem. With those weapons, they must’ve had orders to take Anna alive. I really didn’t want to think about what the kind of people who put gills on their thugs’ necks would do to a captive thief.

I didn’t have any of my usual magical gear on me. Once, that would’ve been a much bigger problem for me, since my various foci help to make my spells more efficient. And in a public place like this, I didn’t want my magic going all over the place.

What’s more, they were just too damn close. I wouldn’t have time for anything subtle.

Which worked out just fine for me. I’ve never been good at subtle.

I rolled up my sleeves and crouched down, gathering my will as I did. I  reached across my body with my right hand.

_“Forzare!”_  I shouted as I rose, sweeping my arm in a wide arc and sending out my will.

On my forearm, palm, and the back of my hand, nearly-invisible designs blazed with blue-white light.

A wave of invisible force flew forth from my hand in a crescent-shape. It slammed into the octokongs and servitors, sending them tumbling ass-over-teakettle.

It also sent a lot of the heavy, covered platters flying. One of them slammed into a floor-to-ceiling window, slashing right through it and creating a spiderweb of cracks. The wave of force kept going through the ballroom. One hotel staffer went flying as though he’d been hit by a linebacker. The sheets of red fabric hanging from the ceiling looked like a breeze was blowing against them, and a couple even ripped free of their hangers.

But another one of the platters had a different trajectory. It spun through the air like a metal frisbee, only stopping once it hit an obstruction.

The obstruction in this case was an octokong’s thick neck. The platter embedded itself deep in the thing’s throat, sending out a spray of black blood. In the second or so before its brain realized that it was dead, the octokong opened its mouth like it was trying to roar. But that didn’t work, not with a severed windpipe.

The octokong went limp, falling onto its back as its dark blood kept flowing out, making a puddle around it.

I blinked, momentarily stunned by that. The odds of my spell doing that must’ve been, like, a million-to-one.

“But million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten,” I muttered to myself, chuckling a little bit.

The wave of force had another consequence for the ballroom, though. Practically every light in the room exploded in a burst of sparks.

As darkness covered the room, people started screaming. But the band kept playing with barely a hiccup, the lights above them having survived the burst of magic.

The remaining octokong let out a roar of primal rage, much louder than what it’d done when it started to rush us. Guess I pissed it off by killing its friend. The roar made everyone in the ballroom really start panicking now, and a ear-piercing mechanical siren began to cut through the din. Someone had pulled the fire alarm.

I grabbed Anna by the hand and ran to one side, shoving the crimson cloth to the side as I ran through it. The death of one of their monsters wouldn’t slow the Fomor down for long. I couldn’t have done any magic that would’ve actually killed or disabled them, not without causing a ton of collateral damage to all the innocent bystanders. But I didn’t really need to win. All we had to do was get out of here in one piece.

Ascher was nowhere to be seen. But she could take care of herself. She’d avoided the Council for years on her own, after all.

“Do you have a plan?” Anna shouted. “Or are you just running blindly?”

“We’re leaving!”

“Obviously. I meant specifics!”

“I saw the fire stairs over this way! Unless you wanna get stuck in an elevator with one of those things?”

Valmont sped up a bit, keeping pace with me surprisingly well given my long legs. With a snarl, I pushed another massive curtain aside and tripped on something behind it. Anna caught me as I stumbled, but not before I’d managed to bang my hip on the buffet table. She pulled me forward, toward the door that the caterers must’ve come in through. I gestured at the sign pointing us toward the fire stairs. Valmont nodded sharply.

We ran through the door and down the hall, skidding to a stop as we rounded the corner and nearly ran into a pair of the Fomor servitors. They were wearing their usual uniform of black slacks and a matching turtleneck to cover up the gills.

And they had machine guns.

I’m talking full automatic weapons, the kind that can go through a lot of ammo pretty damn fast. These two must’ve been left to cover the stairs, and they were quick on the uptake. One of them brought his weapon to bear and began firing in short bursts of three or four rounds.

If I’d been Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, I wouldn’t have had to worry about that. But in reality, a machine gun is pretty much always gonna hit what you’re aiming at, if only because it fires so many bullets that one of them has to hit the target eventually.

I let out a wordless yell of panic and hauled Anna back behind me with my right arm, raising the left one in front of us and screaming,  _“Defendarius!”_

More tattoos lit up on my left wrist, thick bands that were vaguely reminiscent of my old shield bracelet.

This had been the most difficult of the tattoos that I’d had Demonreach etch into my skin. My old shield bracelet had been pretty complex, back before I’d lost it and pretty much everything else I owned. It could block magic and energy, as well as simply physical attacks. The downside to that was that I couldn’t keep it up for very long.

The bullets sent of flashes of light as they hit my shield, revealing a concave plane of energy with ragged edges. Each strike sent a tingle through my wrist, making it feel like my hand was going to sleep. They were probably using armor piercing rounds. The kind that could turn concrete to rubble and punch right through body armor.

Even with the tattoos as a focus for my spell, it took a ton of energy to keep the shield thick enough to stop the bullets, not to mention stop them from ricocheting all over the place.

Hence the concave shape of the shield. I needed them to bounce in a specific direction.

The bullets whizzed past the servitor who was firing. He’d started walking forward, using the steady, rolling kind of motions that kept his upper body steady while he fired.

But finally, my shield did what I’d wanted it to. One of the bullets bounced off my shield and went through the gunman’s hip. He let out a small gasp of surprise and pain, dropping to his knees. The gun fell from his twitching fingers.

The other servitor took it in stride, readying his own weapon. He’d been advancing with his comrade, preparing to fire as soon as the first guy ran out of ammo.

Crap. I didn’t think I had the energy to keep my shield going through another barrage. If I’d had my new staff, I might’ve been able to pull it off. But it’s pretty tricky to get a six-foot piece of wood into a formal gathering.

Valmont shouted something, but I barely heard it as I tried to focus on the shield.

“Close your eyes!” she yelled. Anna moved quickly, tossing something over the top of my shield. It landed on the floor, just at the turtlenecks’ feet.

The uninjured one dove away and I managed to get my eyes shut just as something exploded. There was a flash of light that stained the inside of my eyelids pink, and something hit the air in the hallway like a battering ram. I went down to one knee, keeping the shield up in front of us.

I opened my eyes, my ears ringing from the deafening bang. The shield had kept us safe from the actual force of the explosion. Valmont pulled me away from the hallway, dragging me back towards the ballroom.

“Jesus,” she growled viciously. “What is their problem. I just took some goddamn files. Come on! Other stairs!”

I followed, still blinking spots away from my eyes as we reentered the gloomy ballroom. It was emptying quickly, everyone rushing to the safety of their fancy cars and limos. We ran across the ballroom, dodging fallen tables, chairs, and decorations. Valmont stopped short, only a few yards from the door, and I almost ran into her before I managed to. The rental shoes were nice and almost certainly expensive, but they didn’t have great traction.

“What?” I whispered.

“Quiet,” she replied, her voice low. “I think there’s something over there.”

“Got anymore flash-bangs?” I hissed.

“Most girls make do with pepper spray instead,” Valmont said stuffily. “It’s not like I came here expecting to be attacked by thugs with machine guns and something out of a bad horror movie. The last time I had a job go this badly was when we last saw each other.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I know. Harry Dresden, ‘saving the world one random act of destruction at a time’.”

I looked toward the door, trying to make out all the vague shapes in the darkness. Anna shook her head.

“Guess it was just nerves. This has me a bit rattled,” she said. I raised an eyebrow. Someone as skilled as Valmont would pretty much have to have really good instincts. Odds were good that something  _was_  waiting for us.

“Alright, let’s make a run for it.” I said, making sure the coast was clear. Valmont looked like she disapproved of the plan, but she didn’t suggest anything better.

We made a mad dash for the door.

My instincts were acting up too, screaming that this had been too easy. I didn’t slow down, even though there was a doorway across the hall. I just lowered my shoulder and slammed into the door, hitting it with all my weight, along with the power of the Winter Knight.

I dunno how strong I am, exactly, when I’m drawing on the Mantle. I’m not Superman or anything. But I’ve lifted cars, and I definitely couldn’t do that before I became the Knight.

The door splintered as I rammed it. The lock ripped free of the wood and I barreled through, dragging Anna along behind me.

My instincts had been right. The surviving octokong had been waiting hanging on the ceiling of the hallway with its tentacles, and it was already plummeting down at us. We just barely got past it, crashing into a rack of brooms at the back of a cleaning closet.

I whirled around, blinking spots out of my eyes and looking for the octokong.

“Dresden!” Valmont screamed. I saw her grab onto one of the metal shelves of cleaning supplies, her eyes wide with panic. She’d barely managed to get a grip on the shelf in time when a rubbery tentacle yanked on one of her legs, yanking it out from under her. The octokong pulled harder, and Anna lost her grip on the shelf.

I reached out and grabbed her before the octokong could drag Anna out the door. But the thing was strong, and I probably couldn’t keep a grip on her for long.

I went down, kicking the door closed with every ounce of force I could. It slammed close with a swift, vicious motion, cutting off the tentacle that had been trying to pull Anna Valmont out of the closet.

On the other side of the door, the octokong let out an enraged bellow. I shoved at Valmont, gesturing for her to get behind me. She climbed over me as I kept the door pressed shut with my legs. She pulled a small flashlight out of a pocket and started checking the shelves for anything we could use.

If the octokong had just shoved against the door, maybe I could’ve kept it out. Instead, I heard a series of smaller strikes against the door, feeling the vibrations through my feet.

Then there was a shriek of tearing wood and metal, and the octokong simply ripped the door apart, its tentacles tossing the pieces into the hall behind it.

I roared in challenge and slammed my feet into its chest. My kick drove the air from its lungs and sent the octokong back into the hallway, making me think I’d bought a few seconds. But the octokong’s remaining tentacles lashed out and grabbed at the doorframe, sending it back at me like one of those stretchy gummy toys you get from vending machines at the supermarket.

I lifted my right hand, the tattoos there burning brighter this time, and shouted, _“Forzare!”_  This time, the kinetic energy was focused into a lance, aimed right at the octokong’s chest. It went flying back a bit more this time, but I just didn’t have the juice for something stronger. Not after the shield earlier. The octokong pushed itself back up to its—back upright and charged forward again, closing in on Valmont and I as the edges of my vision went blurry.

A sound split the air, like the howling shriek of some massive machine. A flash of light followed it, so bright and bluish-white that it was like I’d stared at a lightning bolt. A fireball, maybe half the size of a basketball, blossomed in the same spot as the octokong’s head.

It was only there for the blink of an eye before it popped like a bubble.

And the Octokong’s head was gone, reduced to a few fragments of blackened bone and a cloud of dark powder.

It twitched, mismatched limbs flailing for a second before going still, the charred remains of the octokong’s skull falling to floor.

Ascher stepped forward into the doorway, holding her heels in one hand.

I stared at her, gaping.

Hell’s freaking bells.

I’m alright with fire. And I’ve seen people who could use it better than me, most of them Wardens. But what Ascher had just done…I’d never seen someone use fire with so much power and still keep it controlled. Fire’s hard to control. The more power you put into it, the harder you have to fight to control it.

Like I said, I’m alright with fire.

Hannah Ascher was  _incredible_  with it.

I was starting to see why the Wardens had never caught her.

“You alright, Dresden?” She asked, offering me a hand. I took it and let her help me to my feet, brushing the dust and fragments of the door off of the tux.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said. Valmont pushed past us to check the hallway, apparently finding nothing.

“Alright, let’s get out of here before anything else shows up,” she said, starting down the hallway.

 

* * *

 

 

Valmont pulled off the hotel staffer’s uniform on the way out. She had on a simple party dress under it, no different from what most of the women at the event had been wearing. Her dark hair turned out to be a wig, one that she stuffed into a trash can as we passed, shaking out her blond hair. Anna completed the disguise by taking Hannah’s shoes and donning a pair of sunglasses, rushing ahead of us to join the group of socialites leaving the hotel.

She’d been a thief for years. Of course Valmont would be good at disguises. And it was a good thing she was. There was a group of Fomor servitors, still in catering uniforms, checking everyone as they streamed out of the building. But they’d been looking for Anna in her disguise as a hotel staffer, so their flat, inhuman eyes passed right over the blonde socialite in ill-fitting heels.

“Come on,” I muttered once we were past the servitors, motioning off to the side. “Karrin said she’d park over this way.” None of us actually started running, but Valmont and Ascher did have to adopt that weird, stiff-legged gait that speed-walkers use to keep up with my strides. Hopefully no one would notice us amidst all the confusion.

Karrin had parked in a small, mostly-empty parking garage a block down from the hotel, and my hopes of making a clean getaway were dashed as we entered it. The sounds of a struggle echoed around the structure, coming from the corner near where Karrin would’ve entered the building. I broke into a run, drawing my will together as I rounded the corner, ignoring the mantle’s howl in the back of my mind. Or rather, agreeing with it. How  _dare_  they try to hurt what was mine.

There was a group of four Turtlenecks next to the rented limo. Two of them were on the ground, apparently unconscious, the other two attacking Karrin. I readied my will, feeling the shape of the Winter spell in my mind.

But I needn’t have bothered. The second before I unleashed the power, Karrin dodged away from both of the Turtlenecks, slipping behind one of them in a single fluid motion. She drove her foot into the back of his leg, striking it at an angle so it bent inward. There was an ugly cracking sound, that of bone breaking, and the servitor went down with a cry. Even as he crumpled to the ground, Karrin was moving away, grabbing the other one’s arm and directing his haymaker into the side of the car.

The Fomor had enhanced their servitors beyond what was normal for a human, but even those didn’t stop the bones of his hand from breaking as his fist met steel. Karrin kept her hold on him as he snarled in agony, twisting her entire body as she turned that hold into a throw. He slammed to the ground, his skull making a cracking sound as it met concrete.

I blinked, my mouth dropping open.

I mean, I knew that Karrin was pretty much the worst person to get into a fight with at close quarters, but Hell’s bells.

Karrin stood over the defeated Turtlenecks, breathing heavily, her breath condensing to mist in the cold night air. I ran up to her, putting my hands on her shoulders.

“Karrin, you alright?” I asked, still shoving the mantle back down. It still roared in my mind, but this time it was expressing its approval, pleased and  _interested_  by Karrin’s ability to deal with a threat.

Karrin looked up at me, her eyes widening slightly as though she hadn’t quite registered my presence until now.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m good,” she said, wiping away a strand of hair that had been plastered to her forehead by sweat.

Ascher let out an impressed whistle as she walked up to us, eyes flicking between Karrin and the unconscious goons.

“I take back what I said earlier,” she said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a normal human fight like that. Hell, you were moving like some people I knew a while back, and they had some definite advantages over a baseline human.”

Ascher was right, I realized. Karrin had always been good, but I’d never seen that kind of speed from her before. It had reminded me of Susan, and how she moved when she started to draw on the strength and power of her infection.

Karrin gave Ascher a short nod. “Thanks,” she said, pulling the keys out of her pocket. “Now let’s get moving before any more of these assholes come looking for—shit!” Karrin twitched and settled into a defensive posture as one of the turtlenecks started to sit up. I held up a hand, and walked over to him. Before he could sit up all the way, I put my foot on his chest, the tip of my rented shoe resting against his neck.

“Listen up, screwhead. You tell whichever Fomor asshole you serve that Harry Dresden’s back in town, and he says to stay the hell out of Chicago. Or I’ll knock his ass up between his ears,” I said, my voice low and hard.

“You-you would dare to threaten our master?” He hissed, voice shaking slightly.

“Nope, not a threat. It’s just a fact. I’m explaining what  _will_  happen if your boss doesn’t do exactly as I say, got it?” I said, pressing my foot against his throat a little harder.

He met my eyes and nodded, giving me a glare of pure hatred as he did. Satisfied, I lifted my foot away and turned back to Karrin. We watched as the servitors all got to their feet, some of them not quite steady as they walked off. Ascher and Valmont got in the car first, and Karrin had started to walk around to her side when she glanced down at my leg and froze.

“Harry, you’re bleeding!” Karrin said, eyes going wide. She knelt down in front of me, staring at my leg. And I realized that she was right. I didn’t really feel anything, but the last inch or two of my pant leg was soaked with blood. Karrin rolled the damp cloth up, sucking in a sharp breath when she saw the blood running down my leg. My face went pale as I looked around for any more drops of blood on the ground, but I couldn’t see any. It wasn’t a major problem, not with how difficult it would be for someone to use a single drop of blood that had soaked into concrete against me. That little blood would barely be able to connect back to me, and the amount of power it would take to do it meant that anyone who had that much power could just as easily take me on directly.

“Jesus, Harry,  I think you got shot,” Karrin said, looking up at me with wide, worried eyes.

I blinked. “Um, what?” I said. “I don’t feel shot, and I definitely remember what _that_  feels like.”

“Looks like it just grazed your calf,” she said, pointing at a shallow furrow in the back of my leg.

“Yeah, a couple of the servitors had machine guns. M40s, I think.” I told her.

“Christ, you lucked out Harry.” She pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and started to wrap it around my calf. “Butters warned you about this, Harry. Not being able to sense your injuries is dangerous as hell. Now hold still. Need to tie this off until we can get it taken care of.”

Karrin’s shoulders twisted as she pulled the cloth tight around my leg and tied it off. All I felt was a little sting and a bit of tingling. I realized that Winter was flowing through me, filling me like ice water and dulling the pain.

I also noticed that Karrin was kneeling at my feet, something that the Winter Mantle found  _very_  interesting. My heart started beating like a jackhammer, and I forced myself to run through the multiplication tables in my head again as I looked away from Karrin.

“Right, yeah,” I said. “Let’s get going. Sooner I get this taken care of, the better, right?”

Karrin nodded, looking up at me with a mix of concern and something else that I couldn’t quite identify. She got to her feet slowly, not taking her eyes off me while she walked around to her side of the limo.

“Yeah. Get in,” she said, climbing into the driver’s seat.

 

* * *

 

I checked on Hannah and Anna in the backseat as Karrin got us out of the parking garage, passing the squad of emergency vehicles heading in the opposite direction. Valmont’s face was unreadable, eyes hidden by her sunglasses and her mouth in a neutral line. Ascher turned to face me, grinning in excitement.

“Damn. That was something.”

“Yeah.” Karrin said. “Miss Ascher, I’ll take you back to the slaughterhouse to meet up with your…partner.” Karrin couldn’t keep the disgusted sneer off her face as she mentioned Binder. I didn’t blame her. The threats he’d made when we’d run into him a few years ago had been…unpleasant.

“And you aren’t coming?” Ascher asked, frowning.

“Harry’s shot.”

“Wait, when was this?”

“Servitors with machine guns on the first set of fire stairs,” Valmont said as she stared out the window.

“We’re gonna have someone take a look at him. Tell Nicodemus that Valmont is with us,” Karrin said.

“You’re ok with that?” Ascher frowned at Anna.

“I’m not going near him without Dresden around. Anyone smart would do the same.”

I shook my head and sighed. “Relax. Ascher can make her own choices.”

Valmont shrugged and fell quiet. Hannah Ascher kept looking at me, frowning. It was a couple minutes before she spoke.

“Heard a lot of stories about you.”

“Yeah?”

“The warlock who became a Warden, but wouldn’t hunt other warlocks”

I shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“And they didn’t force you to?”

“We were in the middle of a war. There were other things to focus on.”

Hannah frowned contemplatively. “I’ve heard other things too. That you help people. You’ll fight anyone.”

I nodded slightly. “Sometimes. Used to work as a PI.”

“Is he always like this?” Ascher asked Karrin?

“I wish. Usually I can’t get him to shut up.”

“Hey.”

Karrin glanced at me, eyes glinting with amusement.

I shook my head. “Okay, you might have a point.”

“So how come you weren’t whaling on the Fomor goons back there?”

I let my eyes drift shut. I had no desire to explain to Ascher what it was like being the Winter Knight. About how the Knight was a killing machine, plain and simple. The Knight was just a gun, and the Queens were the ones who aimed it and pulled the trigger.

If I’d really tapped into Winter’s power at the hotel, gone along with those instincts…I could’ve killed hundreds. I’d burned down buildings before, and that was before I’d taken up the mantle.

What I really wanted, after fighting for my life, was to tear someone’s clothes off and see where things went from there. I grimaced, and started calculating prime numbers in my head. Winter was primal, instinctive. It was what wanted that, not me.

For the most part, anyway. And I had no intention of letting that side of myself out.

I opened my eyes. “We weren’t there to kill Fomor. We got Anna out, just like we were supposed to.”

“Yeah, and if I hadn’t been there that thing’d’ve ripped you to pieces,” Ascher said.

“Then it’s a good thing you were there,” I replied. “You’ve got some serious skill. Fire’s tricky to use the way you did.”

“Alright,” Ascher said, placated for the moment. “You have no idea how many men I’ve worked with refuse to admit they got saved by a girl.”

I glanced at Karrin, the corners of my mouth pulling up into a smile. “Huh. It’s a new experience for me.”

Karrin snorted, giving me a small smile in return. Then her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, and she adjusted it slightly, angling it so that she could get a slightly better look at the occupants of the backseat.

“You know, Ascher,” Karrin said, her tone perfectly casual, “I’m a bit surprised you’re working with Binder.”

Ascher’s expression was mildly disapproving as she looked at Karrin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look, I was a cop. I’ve got a good sense for people. And you don’t seem like the type to work with a guy who threatened to have his minions rape me the last time he was in Chicago,” Karrin said, eyes still on the road.

Ascher’s eyes flashed, and mouth twisted into a scowl. “What?” she said, voice flat.

“I’m just saying. Maybe you should pay a bit more attention to your partner,” Karrin replied.

I could swear that the temperature inside the car had gone up a couple degrees in the last minute, and when I looked back at Ascher again she was clenching and unclenching her hands, tendons standing out beneath her skin.

“I…I’ll talk to him about that,” she said carefully.

Karrin nodded. “Just thought you should know,” she said as she pulled up in front of the slaughterhouse.

“Let Nicky know we’ll be back at sunrise,” I said. Valmont didn’t say anything, giving Hannah back the shoes she’d appropriated.

Ascher nodded, and turned her gaze to Karrin. “You’re not lying about Binder to screw with me?”

“That’s not the kind of thing I joke about,” Karrin said, eyes focused ahead. Hannah gave another sharp nod, and headed back into the slaughterhouse. Karrin put the car back into drive as soon as Ascher shut the door, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.

“What was that about?” I asked Karrin as we drove towards her house.

“Just something I thought she should know,” Karrin said. “Pretty sure most people would refuse to work with a guy who makes threats like that.”

I nodded. “And if it just so happens to sow a little discord in the group, maybe turn her against Binder and Nicodemus a little?”

“Why, that would be a completely unintended and unexpected consequence that I was in no way aiming for.” Karrin said, her eyes wide and innocent. I chuckled softly.

“Binder really threatened that?” Valmont asked, her voice sharp.

“Yep, he said that his minions would finish off Harry and then get… “unprofessional” with me,” Karrin said, her mouth set in a firm line.

“And here I’d heard he was supposed to be a professional,” Anna said, disgust creeping into her voice. “And we’re supposed to work with him and Nicodemus?”

“And his daughter,” I said. “You remember her, I’m guessing?”

Valmont nodded, turning to stare back out the remember. “Oh, I remember. You’re really going to screw him over?”

“If I can,” I said.

“Good.” She said.


	2. Warning Sign

Karrin pulled into her driveway, but I stopped Valmont before she got out of the car.

“Anna, what’s in that file anyway?”

“Profile of a local businessman,” she said promptly.

“Please tell me it’s not…” I said, fear settling into my gut. Valmont got who I was talking about. John Marcone had tried to buy the Shroud from her, last time she was in town.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. Then, she reached into her purse and passed me the file. I unfolded it and squinted, trying to read it by the dim light from the street lamps. Karrin flicked on the overhead light, which only stayed on for a couple seconds before shorting out.

“It’s always something with you,” Karrin said.

Because I’m a mature adult, I stuck my tongue out at her, tugging the silver pentacle amulet out of my shirt and willing it to light. The silver glowed blue-white, bright enough for me to read by.

“Harvey Morrison,” I read out. “Fifty-seven, investment banker, financial adviser, and…economic securities consultant?” I frowned.

“Means he handles rich people’s money, Harry,” she said.

I shrugged and kept reading. “He sails in the summer, golfs sometimes, and goes to vegas once or twice a year. There’s a whole biography of him here. Favorite books, music, stuff like that. He grew up around here, went to nice schools, yadda yadda.”

“What’s so special about him?” Karrin asked.

I looked back at Valmont, but she just shrugged. “Nothing stood out to me. No obvious graft, but that’s to be expected for someone at his level.”

“What, they’re all honest?” I asked, snorting in disbelief.

“No, they’re just a lot better at hiding it when they do steal.”

“Got a gambling problem? He does go to Vegas.” Karrin suggested.

Anna shrugged again. “Not an obvious one. The Fomor didn’t think he was especially vulnerable for manipulation.”

I raised my eyebrows. “They’ve got files on money guys?”

“They’ve got files on everyone they can. Everyone’s been buying up information like it’s going out of style the last couple years.”

“Everyone?”

“Yeah,” Valmont said. “Fomor, White Court, Venatori, Svartalves. Pretty much every group that isn’t trying to keep a low profile. This was my third job this month. If you want to make money quick, Dresden, I can point you at the serious buyers. Provided you’ve got some secrets to sell.”

I blinked. “Since when are you so in the know about the supernatural?”

“Since monsters killed my two best friends. I learned everything I could. It was pretty shocking how easy it all was. They barely try to hide from the normal world.”

I shook my head. “No point. Most people don’t want to know.”

Valmont smiled bitterly. “So I’ve noticed.”

“Why this guy, though?” Karrin asked. “What makes him important to Nicodemus?”

If my life had been a cartoon, a little lightbulb would’ve appeared over my head just then. “Access,” I said.

“Access?”

“Only thing that makes sense,” I said, tapping the picture of Harvey with a fingertip. “He can get us something no one else can.”

“Probably something to do with one of his clients. Does it give any names?” Karrin asked, leaning towards me to look at the file.

I shook my head. “No, not really. A couple businesses, charities. Most of its only account or client numbers.”

“Not surprising,” Valmont chimed in. “Guys like this, their clients expect their identities to be kept secret. What has Nicodemus said about this job?”

“Only the final objective and you,” I said. “Other than that, he’s keeping everyone in the dark.”

Both women nodded. “Making it harder for you to betray him since you have no idea what’s coming next. Valmont, stay here for a sec while I take care of the security system,” Karrin said, climbing out of the car and walking up her driveway, house key in hand.

I caught up to her right in front of her door, putting a hand on her shoulder to stop her for a second.

“Murph, No details to anyone else, okay? We’re in some serious waters here, and I don’t think Mab’ll be happy with me if any information gets out.”

Karrin grimaced. “So you’re saying we need to keep them in the dark and only give them info as needed?”

I sighed. “Don’t want to, but it’s necessary. And yes, I’m aware of the irony. Like I told you, I have to play this one close to the chest.”

Karrin nodded at me in resignation. “Alright. We’ll do things your way for now.”

She went to unlock the door, and I paused to do a check up on my body. I felt a bit tired, but that was it. And the silver stud in my ear still pulsed with cold, just shy of being uncomfortable.

I already knew that the mantle prevented me from feeling pain. This earring was probably working on a similar principle, blocking the pain of my headaches, keeping the parasite in my brain suppressed like Alfred had been doing. But the power to do that had to come from _somewhere_. I had a nasty suspicion that the earring was drawing on me. It’d be in keeping with Mab’s usual behavior; give me a gift, but give that gift an edge. Making me weaker on my own meant that I’d have to draw on the mantle more if I wanted to fight at my usual level. It was probably her way of telling me to use it more.

But the more I used the mantle, the easier it would become to call on that power whenever I needed it, instead of as a last resort. And the more the mantle of the Winter Knight would change me. Turn me into something like all the Knights who had come before me. A killing machine; an extension of Mab’s will.

If it hadn’t changed me already.

Hot, sickly fear slithered down my spine and settled in my belly as I followed Karrin inside.

——————————————

The door from the garage led into Karrin’s laundry room, and from there to her kitchen. I frowned at the small trail of blood drops I’d left on the tile floor, trying to smudge them out with my shoes, but that didn’t seem to help much. Butters entered the kitchen a moment later, Karrin right behind him.

“Harry, we really need to stop meeting like this,” he said, taking my hand and shaking it.

I gave him a tired grin. “Yeah. Surprisingly, the Winter Knight doesn’t get any sort of health insurance.”

Butters gave me a once-over. “What happened to you, anyway?”

“Octokongs, and a turtleneck with a machine gun,” I replied.

“Right calf,” Karrin called as she brought Valmont in and locked the door behind her. “It just grazed him, but better safe than sorry.”

Butters frowned at her. “He’s been shot and you’re letting him walk around on it?”

The look that Karrin gave him would’ve frozen magma. “What should I have done, put him in my purse?”

Butters shook his head, sighing. “Harry, we talked about this. Just because you don’t feel pain doesn’t mean you aren’t hurt. That’s kind of why we feel pain in the first place.” He gestured at the kitchen table. “Karrin help me extend that so we can get him on it.”

“Yeah,” she said.

Once they’d fiddled with the table and gotten it extended all the way, Karrin nudged me with her shoulder. “Come on. I’m not gonna lift you up there.”

Despite that, Karrin did help me lift my legs onto the table. I shouldn’t have had that much trouble getting on it, honestly.

I began drifting off as soon as I lay down all the way. I managed to hear Butters ask Karrin to go in the living room so he had some space to work. Distantly, I felt him prodding at the wound in my leg, something that probably would’ve been a lot more unpleasant without the Winter mantle. 

———————————————

_She’s right in front of you, you fool…_

I started awake, blinking and raising my head from the table. Someone had been talking to me, whispering in my ear as clear as day. But no one was that close.

“Did you say something?” I asked Butters. He was over at the sink, cleaning up his medical instruments and whatnot.

“Lay down,” Butters said with the perfect assurance of authority.

I listened. Hey, he was the doctor here. The earring was so cold against my skin, like something dipped in liquid nitrogen.

“Did you say something?” I repeated.

“No. You were really out of it, man. Figured you needed your rest.”

I frowned and glanced around the kitchen. “Anyone else in here?”

“No.”

“I could’ve sworn…”

“Yes?” Butters said, raising an eyebrow and waiting.

I shook my head. “Must’ve been a dream or something.”

“Whatever,” Butters said.

“Give it to me straight, doc? Am I gonna make it?” I asked, making my voice sound weak and shaky.

Butters rolled his eyes at me. “Well, it’s not as bad as it could’ve been. Barring infection, you ought to be fine. No, actually—you should be in the hospital, and then in bed for a week. But I know you. You’re just gonna keep going with whatever crazy, dangerous thing you were doing that got you shot in the first place.”

I raised my head to look at myself. My shirt was gone, and so was most of the right leg of my pants. Ha. Nicky’s budget for this heist could suck it. Butters had put bandages on a few smaller cuts and stitches on two larger ones, as well as on the wound in my leg.

Butters looked at me again, his eyes drawn to my forearms.

“Harry, how on earth did you manage to get tattoos while you were stuck on that island?” He asked. “Please tell me you didn’t do those yourself.”

“Butters, if I’d done that they’d look a hell of a lot worse. No, I had Demonreach help me.”

He stared at me, his expression blank. “Demonreach. As in, that freaky, giant thing in the cloak we saw last Halloween?” 

“Yep,” I confirmed, tracing the designs with a fingertip.

“What did he use, the bones of some other poor bastard who couldn’t get off that place? Sweet fancy Moses, Harry, do you have any idea how unsanitary it is to get a tattoo anywhere other than a reputable tattoo shop that keeps everything clean and sterile?” Butters said, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

I sighed, sitting up on the table. “Yes, Butters. I didn’t do this on a whim. They’re a backup, for when I don’t have any of my usual foci on me.”

The little man sucked in a sharp breath, staring at my forearms with wide eyes. “But…isn’t that kinda dangerous? Channeling magic through your own body like that?”

“Oh yeah. The spell work isn’t anywhere near as extensive as what I’ve done with my staff, or my old stuff. But it’s good enough in a pinch,” I said, starting to move towards the edge of the table until my legs were hanging down. “Can I get dressed now?” I asked.

Butters sighed and nodded. “Just don’t move too fast, okay. The blood loss wasn’t too serious, I think, but you might be dizzy for a while.”

I got to my feet, slowly, and pulled some fresh clothes out of the duffel bag, getting them on after I’d ditched the remains of the tuxedo.

“What _are_ you doing, anyway?” Butters asked as I dressed myself. “Karrin’s being more tight lipped than usual.”

I shook my head at him. “Better if I don’t say, for now at least,” I replied. “Before I do anything else, though, I need to settle a debt.”

Butters frowned in confusion. “What?”

I reached back into the duffel bag and pulled out a block of wood. It hadn’t been easy, but I’d managed to carve it into a rough replica of a human skull. Eventually. After several failed attempts. After I’d carved the thing, I’d started on the spellwork, which had taken just as long as the carving had. The thing was now covered in sigils and symbols, like the ones on my staff and my forearms. Butters stared at it, his eyes going wide with dawning comprehension. 

“Is that—?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Give it to…” I paused, aware of who else might be listening in. “Give it to our mutual friend. I made him a promise, and I’m keeping it.”

“Yeah,” Butters said, “I’ll get it to him.” The short man slipped the wooden skull into his bag, his face schooled into a carefully neutral expression. I frowned.

“Um, Butters, are you ok?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Just haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

“No, man. That’s not all. Something’s up.” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. He jerked away sharply, giving me a very odd look.

“Harry,” he said slowly, “you should stop asking. This isn’t something you’re gonna want to talk about.”

“Yeah, maybe. But since when have I ever done what was good for me? C’mon, Butters,” I said. He took a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh.

“Alright. Fine…” Butters said, voice sharp. “Look, did you ever read that one Stephen King book, Pet Semetary?”

I nodded. “Yeah, a long time ago. I think I saw part of the mov…” I trailed off as I realized what Butters was getting at. “You think I came back wrong or something?”

“Harry, you don’t really know what it’s been like here, the last few years. I mean, while you were here you…you were to Chicago what Batman is to Gotham. A lot of things steered clear, just because of your reputation. But then you died. And stuff started sniffing around. More than just the Fomor, I mean. Ghouls. Stuff coming out of Undertown. Hell, even the normals know _something’s_ up. Molly, she tried to do what she could, but…”

I nodded. Back when I’d been wandering around as a ghost, I’d seen what Molly had been like. She’d been putting herself through hell to try and fill in for me. It had been destroying her. Butters wasn’t really looking at me anymore. His eyes were fixed on some distant point, and his hands were moving in a slow, unconscious pattern. I made a ‘go on’ motion with my hand, and Butters cleared his throat.

“Anyway, you came back as a ghost. And that was…” he shrugged, “weird. But then you always were kinda weird.

“And then you came back, man. When things were getting even worse, even weirder. You can’t know what that was like. You’ve been who you are for so long, I doubt you even remember what it was like not to have the kind of power you do. The rest of us, we tried. But no one could do all the stuff you did. And it felt like we were all fumbling around in the dark. But you came back, and we all thought maybe things were gonna get better. We had _hope_. And that’s been in kinda short supply around here.

“But you weren’t back. Not back in town. You just stayed out on Spooky Island, where no one could really get to you. Molly was gone too.” Butters’ voice was sharper now, and his hands had curled into fists. “Will and Georgia were both in the hospital at one point. We weren’t sure if they’d make it. They might’ve left their kid an orphan. They’ve got a kid now, man. But you didn’t do _anything_. You just stayed on Spooky Island.”

“Butters,” I said, “I had to stay there.”

His eyes flicked to me, and they’d gotten harder. “Harry, look at this from everyone else’s perspective. Ever since Chichén Itzá, you’ve been different. You haven’t been _you_. Not the you that everyone knew.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, my guts tying themselves into an anxious knot.

“You made a deal with Mab. I remember when you talked about her, one time. You were freaking _terrified_ of her. And then you died. Your ghost showed up. Got us to do things. I got my freakin’ body stolen! And then you show up alive, but you’ve got all these weird powers you didn’t have before. And you’re in town for maybe a _day_ before you’re gone, and so’s Molly. You were holed up on that island where practically nobody could reach you. You weren’t helping. You weren’t here. You weren’t you.

Butters turned away from me, taking off his glasses to clean them with a little cloth he’d taken out of his pocket. “Look, shit happens. Maybe you’ve got great reasons for how you’ve been acting. But…that doesn’t really count for much, in the long run. It’s not a replacement for actually being here. Kinda makes a guy get jaded, you know? And then, when I’ve finished stitching you up, what’s the first thing you do? Do you apologize for what you did to my computer room? For beating up Andi? No, the first thing you do is focus on paying off a debt. You sound like one of the Fae!” He snapped, jabbing my sternum with a finger.

The knot in my guts turned into a leaden weight, and a chill that had nothing to do with the mantle raced down my spine. Butters was going off of incomplete information. But that didn’t make him wrong.

He finished putting his gear back in the bag, and when he spoke again his voice was much more gentle. “I’m scared, man. Because I know what’s out there now. And Karrin told me a little bit of what’s going on. When I find out more, will it make me feel better? Because at this point…I’m not sure I recognize you anymore.”

My mouth hung open a little bit, and my throat had suddenly gone very dry. I stared at Butters for maybe half-a-minute before I managed to answer him.

“No, it probably wouldn’t make you any less worried. And I can’t really tell you. I’m sorry,” I said.

Butters nodded and sighed. “At least you’re being honest,” he said. “There’s OJ in the fridge. Make sure you get plenty of fluids in the next few days.”

And with that, Butters headed out. I heard low voices coming from the living room, followed a minute or two later by the front door opening and closing, and the sound of a car driving off.

Butters had looked exhausted and afraid. And that fear had ground him down, like a high-pressure stream of water does to stone. That fear was making him doubt things he’d never doubted before. And I couldn’t really blame him. A little worry was a good thing, when you’re dealing with the supernatural. That the doubts had been about me was painful. But I saw where he was coming from. And he’d been straight with me about them, knowing that if I really had been turning into a monster he might as well be waving a red cape in front of a bull.

Despite his doubts, he’d still helped me out when I was in need.

Butters might not even be wrong.

————————————————————

Karrin appeared in the doorway as I heard Butters and Andi drive away.

“Guessing you heard that,” I said.

Karrin nodded, getting a jug of orange juice out of the fridge and pouring it into a glass. She handed it to me and I sipped at it slowly.

“Do you think he’s right?”

“I can understand why he’s worried,” she said.

“But do you agree?”

Karrin shook her head and put her hand over mine, where it rested on the top of the table. “I trust you, Harry.”

There are some words, some phrases that have way more power than they should, given how small they are. That was one of them. The weight in my stomach seemed to vanish.

“Maybe you shouldn’t, Karrin.”

She snorted. “And maybe I’m perfectly capable of making my own choices.”

“Only maybe?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at her. I didn’t wear a glove on my left hand anymore, and I had regained a good chunk of the sensation in it. Her hand felt warm on mine, driving away some of the chilly fear. 

“This year’s been rough, Harry. For everyone,” she said, lacing our fingers together. “Sometimes people worry. They get scared. They lose faith. But they’ll get it back.” Karrin squeezed my hand once, and then let go.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

“Come on. Valmont’s in the guest room. You can take my room, and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I’ll take the couch. It’s your bed.”

“If my couch was big enough to fit you, there’d be no room for anything else in the living room. Besides, you’re the one who’s all beat up.”

I nodded in acknowledgement, bending down to pet Mister as my old cat leapt at my shins in his traditional greeting. I ran my fingers through his soft fur and let some of the tension drain out of my body. Karrin smiled at us.

“Come on, let’s get to bed. We’ve gotta get an early start tomorrow, and you need as much rest as you can get.”

I followed Karrin into the living room, pausing before I headed for her bedroom. The coffee table was covered in guns and cleaning supplies. Some of them were partly disassembled and in the middle of being cleaned. Others lay in a large gym back. I recognized most of them, but there were a couple new ones mixed in. I raised my eyebrows.

“New toys?”

“I’m a girl, Harry. I accessorize,” she said, a satisfied smile on her face. “Now get to bed.”

I paused in the bedroom doorway, looking back at Karrin over my shoulder. There was a part of me that wondered if I was doing the right thing, bringing her into this. Was I being stupid and selfish, only asking Karrin for her help because I wanted her by my side?

Even if I was, I doubted I could get her out. She’d kick my ass for trying.

Only one thing to do, then. Wreck Nicky and his pals before they can hurt her.

“Night, Karrin,” I said.

——————————————————

My dreams that night were odd.

At the start, they were a disjointed kaleidoscope of noise and color, impossible for me to keep up with. All I could really do was struggle along through the mess, focusing on the way ahead. I was sure that I wasn’t the only one caught in all this, too. There were other Harrys and several Murphys, each of them pushing their way through in confusion.

At some point the scenery changed, drawing together into something more coherent.

I was standing on a vast plain of stone, staring off toward the horizon. There was something dark there, something growing larger as I watched.

“Ugh, one of these dreams again?” Karrin said from my side. I looked, and there she was. But it wasn’t Karrin as I was used to seeing her. It wasn’t the version of her that I saw through the Sight, either. There, Karrin looked like a warrior angel, wings and flaming sword and all. This dream version of her was close to that, but different. Instead of the simple white tunic I’d seen her wear in the Sight, she was clad in silver-blue plate armor, an unfamiliar symbol etched into the breastplate. But the armor was like nothing I’d ever seen. There were no gaps in Karrin’s armor at the joints. Where there should’ve been leather or mail, there were just smaller plates of metal that fit together precisely, gliding smoothly over each other when she moved. In her hands she bore a long, single-edged sword, held at the ready as she faced whatever was coming. The sword was glowing, wisps of white smoke rising from its surface. And I could see the same glowing smoke coming from Karrin, curling off of the exposed skin of her face and puffing out from between her lips whenever she exhaled.

“Karrin?” I asked, looking back toward the horizon. Whatever that shadow was, it was moving closer, and it was coming fast.

“Harry? Huh, that’s the first time I’ve had one of these dreams where I’m not the only one here. Look, just brace yourself and hang on!” she said, raising her voice as I realized what was coming.

That darkness was a massive storm, stretching across the horizon. Massive clouds came forward, iron grey and heavy with rain. It was like a wall of water and wind, roaring and howling as it surged on. Lightning flashed within the storm, lighting the clouds from within and adding the rumble of thunder to the sounds of the rain and wind.

This wasn’t just a storm, this was a freaking hurricane.

Karrin grabbed me and pulled me to her, grabbing my bicep while I wrapped my arm around her waist. The deafening roar of the storm grew louder, and I could see things at the front of it, objects picked up and borne along by the winds.

It hit us like a locomotive the size of a house, snatching both of us up and carrying us along within itself. Karrin blazed brighter, and something pulled us into the air. We were flying, and as I looked back I saw a larger version of the glyph on Karrin’s breastplate, hovering at her back, looking like a pair of wings.

Lightning flashed all around us, and I heard Karrin screaming something at the top of her voice. I couldn’t make out the words, but her tone was one of defiance, not fear. I clung to her tighter, and my weight didn’t seem to be doing anything to affect our flight, for better or worse.

The winds grew even louder, howling all around and snatching the words away whenever I tried to say something to Karrin. 

It felt like I was being punched from every angle, rain slamming against me and chilling me to the bone.

The storm’s howl reached a crescendo, the overwhelming sound driving every other thought from my mind.

And then…it stopped.

I opened my eyes and saw clear sky above us. We must be in the eye of the storm, I realized. But instead of seeing more wind and rain ahead, I saw what seemed to be a face. It was massive, as vast as the sky, and yet I could see all of it , comprehend its features clearly. It spoke with a voice that _was_ the storm, all the wind and rain and thunder coming together into something that I didn’t hear so much as feel. Karrin stared at it, appearing to understand what sounded like a foreign language to me.

I felt my hands begin to slip, and they were too numb from the freezing rain to respond as I tried to hold onto Karrin tighter.

A scream escaped my throat as I fell, the rush of wind tearing the scream away. Karrin dove for me, wings folded in close to decrease wind resistance. Her eyes were wide with panic, the light from them painting her outstretched arms a pale blue-white.

Her fingertips brushed against mine.

—————————————————

I jolted awake with a start. Not surprising, considering my dream. That’s how it always feels when you wake up from a dream when you’re falling.

Except that I wasn’t in Karrin’s bedroom.

I looked around, staring at the interior of my old car, the Blue Beetle. I was obviously still dreaming, because that car had been utterly destroyed a couple years ago. Just like pretty much everything else I had owned. The road I was on had no distinguishing features, and I could barely see ten feet in front of me with the pouring rain.

Molly sat in the passenger seat. My apprentice—or ex-apprentice, I supposed—was pretty, but she still looked somewhat unhealthy. Better than she had when she’d been living on the streets, certainly, but a long way from how she’d been before things went to hell. Her hair was several shades paler than its natural hue, a blond so light that it was nearly white. Despite the freezing air in the car, all she wore was an old t-shirt with some sort of manga character striking a strange pose on it, sandals, and some slightly worn jeans.

“Would it kill my dreams to make sense for once?” I said aloud. “I mean, first everything’s all jumbled like I’m inside of a dryer on high, then I’m in some sort of hurricane with Karrin and a giant sky-face, and now this? I get enough weird during my days.”

Molly looked at me, startled and blinking rapidly. “Harry?”

“Um, duh. This is _my_ dream.”

“No,” she said slowly, as though trying to explain something that she’d already explained several times, “it’s not.”

I lifted my hands from the steering wheel and leaned back a bit, squinting and waving my fingers like Tim the Enchanter, and said “Wizard,” in a deep, serious voice.

Molly burst out laughing, and the sound seemed to make the car several degrees warmer. “Oh my God, Harry. You—you did this on accident, didn’t you? Does that mean you’re off the island? Is your head alright?”

I echoed her surprised blinking from earlier. “Molly?”

She reached across the seats and put one arm around my shoulder in a hug. It was slightly awkward, given the seat belts, but it felt more solid than most other dreams. More _real_.

“Good to see you’re alright, Boss-man,” she said.

“Um, yeah. How’s this even happening, though?” I asked. 

Molly shrugged. “I’m wondering the same thing. My psychic defenses have gotten a lot stronger lately, after the Sidhe started attacking me in my dreams around New Year’s.”

“Wait, what? You’re supposed to be in _charge_!” I said incredulously.

“Sure, in person. In dreams…it’s the GIFT in action,” Molly said.

“Gift?”

“Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory,” she explains. “It’s supposed to explain why otherwise normal people turn into raging jackasses on the internet. Normal person plus anonymity plus audience—.”

“Equals fuckwad,” I said, nodding in understanding. I might not have been able to use the internet, but I’d heard more than enough from the Alphas and Butters about how people acted to get what Molly was talking about.

“Yeah. But…honestly, I think it’s a good thing that they’re doing it. In a twisted, Winter sort of way I mean.”

“Getting attacked in your dreams is a _good_ thing?”

“Harry, Maeve was…she was a pretty awful Winter Lady towards the end. The Sidhe are just making sure I’m up to the job, that I’ll do better than she will.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s sorta like when Mom’d leave me in charge of everyone else while she was out of the house.”

I chuckled, which brought a smile to Molly’s lips.

“Good, you can still laugh. And all that’s kinda why I’ve been incommunicado. I have, like, a century-and-a-half of Maeve’s backlog to get through. But what’s your excuse?”

“I’ve been trying. Every day. Since September,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“Mab,” Molly snarled, her eyes narrowing. “You need me?”

“ASAP. Or sooner. According to Mab, the thing in my head’s gonna burst out and kill me in the next few days. She and Demonreach think you can help.”

“And she’s using the deadline to force you to do something you’d rather not do for her, otherwise she won’t let me help,” Molly said. I guess after a few years of being taught by the Leanansidhe and then becoming the new Winter Lady, she had a pretty good handle on how Mab worked.

“Pretty much.”

“So? How bad is it?”

I told her.

Molly swore. My eyebrows went up. Molly hardly ever swore, and I’d never even heard some of those invectives before. Despite the hair dye and punk-slash-goth stuff she used to wear, Molly had always been a pretty good Catholic.

Also, her mother’s glare rivaled Medusa’s for sheer stopping power.

“Nicodemus? Really? Please tell me Sanya’s there.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said, and then paused. “Well, not _yet_ anyway.”

“He’ll be there. A Knight will always be there. That’s how it works,” she said, her voice rock-solid with certainty. “And I’ll…”

Molly’s voice cut off for a second, and her whole body flickered. A second later, the entire dream world was flickering, and we were surrounded by other Blue Beetles, each with their own version of Harry and Molly.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can!” Molly called, her voice faint and distorted as she slowly faded away. I turned back to the road. It was like MC Escher had designed a highway system. I tried to keep going, but the confusion just got worse and worse. It seemed like I kept switching to different Blue Beetles, never in one long enough to figure out how to get out of this mess.

The radio crackled to life and a woman’s voice came through, speaking in the smooth cadence of a practiced newsreader.

“…Chicago Wizard Harry Dresden continues to blindly ignore the obvious. Mr. Dresden is expected to continue ignoring the evidence before him, as he has done in the past. This habitual tunnel vision will likely lead to his death within the next forty-eight hours…”

————————————————

I woke up, my instincts screaming that I was in danger, that I wasn’t alone in the bedroom.

I was _partly_ right.

Karrin carefully shut the door behind her and walked over to the bed, almost totally silent.

“You ok? I heard noises.” She said, putting something down on the bedside table. In the dim light coming through the window I could see that it was her SIG.

I yawned, trying to put my thoughts together.

“Um…sort of.” I said. She wasn’t convinced.

“Harry, seriously, talk to me,” Karrin murmured, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Just some weird dreams,” I said, reaching for the glass of water on the nightstand. “You were in one, actually.”

“Oh really?” Karrin asked. I couldn’t see her very well, but could hear the smirk in her voice. “You have dreams about me a lot, Harry?”

I blushed. “Not that kind of dream. It was…strange. We were in the middle of a desert or something, and there was this huge storm that hit us, and it was like we were flying, and…” I trailed off realizing just how nonsensical it sounded when I tried to explain it. That was the trouble with dreams. They made sense in the moment, but trying to explain them makes you sound silly.

We were silent for a moment, and I studied Karrin, noting the way the soft light illuminated her legs. She didn’t appear to be wearing anything, apart from the long CPD t-shirt. I swallowed, looking away before I made her uncomfortable or something.

“Harry?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“No, it’s just…the way you were looking at me,” she murmured. “It was kinda intense.”

“Like I said, sorry.”

“Intense isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Karrin said. I felt her move closer, the distribution of weight on the mattress shifting. She put her hand on my cheek, and gently turned my head so that I was looking at her. “I’ve been thinking about some things. Like what we talked about last year.”

I swallowed, feeling her gaze on me more than I actually saw it. “Oh?”

“And I’ve been thinking about how dangerous this could be,” she continued. Her hand was still on my cheek, and I leaned into her touch slightly, barely conscious of what I was doing.

“Danger isn’t exactly new for us.”

“No, but…well, this is pretty big. And so I’ve been thinking about what I’d regret if—if something went wrong.”

“And?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. My entire body was tense as I waited, barely even breathing.

“This.” Karrin said, and slid her hand a bit lower, from my cheek to my jaw. I felt her weight shift. And then Karrin captured my lips with hers.

The kiss was slow and tender as we explored each other’s lips. Hers were soft, and the pressure shifted between our lips as we pressed against each other. My heart was pounding in my chest, and my breathing sped up to match it. Karrin was breathing faster too, her breath warm and _right_ against my lips.

Raw desire flooded my body, making me stiffen as I was almost overwhelmed by _need_. I heard Winter roaring in my mind, demanding that I give in and satisfy my urges. It sent my instincts screaming, telling me that the only thing separating us was a blanket. That I was the Winter Knight and Karrin was right here with me, like I’d wanted for so long.

I pulled my head back, away from hers, and moaned “Karrin.”

She nodded, leaning close. “I know, Harry. This…this whole Winter Knight thing. It makes you more impulsive. Pushes you.”

I nodded slightly, keeping my body still apart from that. Karrin ran a hand down my bare chest, her face only inches from mine. I ached to do more, to touch her, feel her, to be with her in every way.

“Karrin, I…oh hell’s bells…I’m not sure if I can…” I whispered, the words I wanted to say getting jumbled on the way to my mouth.

“I know,” she said.

“I don’t know…” I told her. God, I wanted her so bad. But it couldn’t be about empty lust and urges. I cared about her too much for that. She deserved better than something simple and mindless and uncaring. I tried to explain myself to her, but everything got jumbled and I probably sounded like someone just learning to talk.

Karrin pressed her lips to mine, softer than before. My eyes drifted shut, and I felt twin trails of tears running down my cheeks. When I opened my eyes again, I could see that her eyes were shining too.

“Oh, Harry,” she said, voice softening. 

“I want this, Karrin,” I said past the lump in my throat. “I want you so much. But I want it to be _right_. You deserve that. And as long as…as I’m the Knight…” I choked on a small sob and closed my eyes again.

“Harry, it’s ok,” she said, wiping away the tears.

“What if Butters is right? What if I’m not me anymore? If I’m not…not who you want?”

“You are. Harry, I know you. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” she said, leaning down to kiss me gently. “I want this, Harry. But I can wait until you’re ready.”

“Thanks,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “Thank you, Karrin.” I kissed her back, slow and soft and _right_. Right now, I wanted nothing more than to be with her, to give Karrin what she wanted. But the mantle was still there, just beneath the surface. And Karrin didn’t want the mantle; she wanted me.

“Is there anything I can do?” Karrin asked, laying down on top of the blankets, her head resting on my chest.

“Just stay here? With me?” I whispered. Karrin nodded, sliding under the covers with me.

“Scoot over, Harry. You’re taking up too much space,” she said, nudging me with her elbow. I moved closer to the edge of the bed, so much so that my left arm hung off the side.

“Karrin, you don’t need as much space as me, come on,” I murmured, gesturing at my arm.

Karrin sighed, and slid over a bit. “No, this is no good. Dammit, I didn’t think my first time in bed with you would need so much maneuvering.”

“Karrin, I’m six-nine and you’re five-nothing. How could you not think that it’d be a little tricky?” I asked, grinning and blushing.

“Because I figured I’d just ride you. Why, do you have other ideas?” She said, settling down on her side, back to me. I moved closer, my chest pressing against her back. I draped one arm over Karrin, and she snuggled closer to me with a contented sigh.

“A—a few,” I stammered.

“Well then, you’ll have to tell me about them,” she said. “In detail.” I couldn’t see her face from this position, but I could hear the wicked grin in her voice. I smiled in return, and laid a soft kiss on the side of her neck. A shiver raced through Karrin’s body and a soft, pleased ‘mmmmm’ escaped her lips.

“Night Karrin,” I said, pulling her closer.

“Night, Harry.”

We drifted off to sleep, and my dreams were much more pleasant this time.


	3. Field Trip

The sun was just creeping over the horizon when Karrin pulled up in front of the slaughterhouse. Valmont shivered when passed through the front door, glancing around warily.

“Why on earth would he choose this place as a base of operations?” She wondered.

“It’s out of the way, and enough bad stuff has happened here that it probably makes him feel right at home,” I said. Valmont nodded, and I kept going. “I don’t know the specifics, but I’ve heard that the Denarians get a boost from causing pain and suffering. Maybe they get something similar from being around places where it’s happened?”

“Makes sense,” she said.

When we came out onto the catwalk, I saw Jordan and another squire standing close to each other, making odd gestures.

“Hey, Jordan,” I said. “What’s up?”

Jordan just glared at me. The other squire, meanwhile, had retreated back to an intersection of the catwalk and was scanning the floor intently.

Karrin sighed, and stepped forward. “Jordan, you’re clearly worried about something. What’s going on?” She asked. I recognized the subtle change in Karrin’s body language. She was trying to put the kid at ease, the same way she would when talking with a witness.

Jordan glared at me again, and then made a few motions with his hands. Karrin nodded, and I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Sign language, Harry. What, did you think they’d just write down everything when they wanted to talk?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a bit silly since that was _exactly_ what I’d thought.

“He’s saying there are only ten goats now,” Karrin said, gesturing at the pen down on the floor. I looked at it, confused. There’d been twelve there yesterday.

But Jordan was right. There were two fewer goats down there today. I raised an eyebrow at Karrin.

“When did the two goats go missing?” She asked.

Jordan signed something again, and Karrin translated it.

“One last night, and one in the last hour.”

My eyebrows shot up. “And you didn’t see anything either time? No sounds or smells?”

Jordan shook his head, and signed at Karrin again.

“He thinks there’s something in here that they haven’t seen. Something dangerous.”

I nodded. “Yeah, probably. And Nicodemus hasn’t said anything, I’m guessing?”

Jordan shook his head again. 

“Kid, when your boss doesn’t want you asking questions, you gotta start wondering about it. My guess is that he’s feeding the goats to something,” I said casually. “Something big. I mean, it’d have to be if it’s eating a whole goat at every meal.”

Jordan’s face went pale, but he stayed still.

“Your boss has hurt a lot of people, Jordan. Good people,” I said, thinking back to Shiro, bloodied and tortured, dying in the chapel at O’Hare. The kid took a step back, eyes wide. Guess I hadn’t kept my poker face. I stepped forward a little, meeting Jordan’s eyes briefly.

“When this whole thing goes down in flames, Nicky’s not gonna lift a finger to help you guys. He’ll throw you to the wolves the second you’re more trouble than you’re worth. I dunno why you follow him, but trust me on this; it’s not worth it,” I said, keeping my voice low. Giving the kid a final nod, I headed down the stairs to the slaughterhouse floor, Karrin and Valmont behind me.

“You honestly think he’ll believe that?” Karrin asked me. “You said yourself that these people are a cult, raised from birth to serve Nicodemus.”

I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But he’s still a kid. He deserves the truth.”

“Doubt he’ll listen,” Valmont said.

“Probably not. But at least someone told him.”

“You really think there’s something in here? Something eating the goats?” Karrin asked, looking back at the pen.

“Makes sense. Nic’s gotta have something in reserve, and every job needs some muscle.”

“So?” Valmont asked. “You wizards have that Sight-thing, right? Can’t you use that to find it?”

“I could,” I said, “but I’d rather not. Last time I did that, I ended up Seeing something that left me in the fetal position gibbering for an hour or two.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. We’ll just have to be subtle on this one,” I said. Karrin snorted, and when I looked back her eyes were sparkling with mirth.

When we reached the conference table, I stopped short. Nicodemus wasn’t sitting at the head of the table, reminding everyone who was in charge like he had yesterday. Instead he was standing off in one corner, deep in a whispered conversation with his daughter. And his shadow had spread out past the illumination that the work lights provided, stretching to the far wall of the slaughterhouse. I watched as it paced back and forth, its form oddly warped and distorted by more than just the size. Its shoulders were a bit too broad, its arms too long. And even from all the way on the other side of the conference area, even though I’m about as psychically sensitive as a rock, I could feel anger radiating off of Nicodemus like heat from an open furnace.

My keen private investigator’s instincts told me that something had gone wrong.

Valmont and I sat down, both of us just a little paler than we’d been seconds before, and Karrin took up her position behind me, same as yesterday. Ascher and Binder were both sneaking glances over their shoulders at Nic and Deirdre.

But my musings on just what could’ve happened were interrupted by a glance at the snack table, where several boxes of donuts lay open and inviting.

My stomach growled, indicating that the breakfast I’d had at Karrin’s before we’d left needed something to keep it company. Especially given the meager fare that I’d been subsisting on while trapped on Demonreach.

I considered the odds that Nicodemus might’ve laced the donuts with some sort of obscure poison that only worked on the Winter Knight. It was certainly possible that something like that existed, and I wouldn’t put it past Nic to have some on hand, just in case.

But my hunger won out. I grabbed a paper plate, loaded it up with donuts, and sat back down at the table, chowing down.

 _Hell’s bells_ , these were good donuts.

While I ate, I looked at the man sitting at the end of the table. He was plain looking, wearing jeans and an athletic jacket. Since he was the only person at the table who hadn’t been there yesterday, I was pretty sure that he was the mysterious Goodman Grey that Binder had been sent to pick up last night. He was around average height, with a slightly dark complexion and a few streaks of grey in his hair. The only thing that stood out about him were his eyes. They were an odd sort of golden-brown color, but that wasn’t particularly noteworthy. Not a color I’d seen on anyone before, but I suppose that you can have just about any eye color sooner or later, given the size of the human population. No, the odd part was that there was an odd sheen to them when the light hit them, making them look more metallic. It was only there for a second, but it was enough for me to start thinking that this ‘Goodman Grey’ probably wasn’t quite human.

And the other thing that bugged me about him was how calm he was. Unlike everyone else at the table, Nicodemus’ cold fury didn’t seem to unnerve him at all. As a matter of fact, Grey was completely relaxed. And that just wasn’t right. With all the dark energy in this place, everyone would’ve been on edge even without all the extremely dangerous people here. Karrin’s poker face was good, but I knew she could spring into action at any moment. Violent action. Binder’s eyes were constantly moving, like he was trying to figure out the best way to get out of here at a moment’s notice. Ascher was looking around too, but she reminded me more of some kind of large predator, trying to figure out which member of the herd would be the easiest kill. Nicodemus was still angry and alert, his shadow probably doing the work of keeping an eye on everyone for him. Despite the fact that it didn’t have eyes. Then again, that would’ve just made it even creepier than it already was. And next to him, Deirdre was drumming her fingernails against the dark wood of the table. Her very sharp fingernails.

Everyone in the room was on edge, prepared for things to get violent. Everyone except Grey. He was reading something in a manilla folder, idly doodling in the margins. So either this guy was just plain oblivious, or he was so dangerous that he legitimately didn’t need to worry about anyone else in the room.

I was betting it was the second one.

I reached into my duster, pausing just a moment too long before I withdrew a paperback book a bit too quickly.

Everyone reacted, even Nic and Deirdre over in their corner. Binder flinched, pushing his chair back slightly as though preparing to bolt for the door. Nicodemus’ shadow twitched, one of its long, thin arms reaching in the general direction of the conference table. Deirdre’s hair moved, as though ruffled by an invisible breeze. Ascher’s shoulder moved slightly, like she’d just managed to stop herself from bringing up a hand to perform some sort of defensive magic.

Not Grey, though. His only reaction was a brief twitch of his lips, as though he’d stopped himself from smiling.

I sat down, keeping the book closed.

“So, I’m guessing you’re Goodman Grey?” I said, staring at the man. He inclined his head a fraction.

“I am,” he said. He had a deep, resonant voice, and just a hint of what might’ve been a southern accent.

“Yes. I’d like to welcome Mr. Grey, who has agreed to assist us in our endeavor. I’ve already briefed him on each of you.” Nicodemus said, taking his seat at the head of the table. His shadow was back to normal. Well normal for him anyway. He still only had one shadow despite the multiple light sources, and it wasn’t being cast in the right direction.

Grey’s eerie eyes swept up and down the table, stopping on Karrin.

“I don’t recall any mention of this woman, Nicodemus.” he said quietly.

“This is Karrin Murphy,” he said, “formerly of the Chicago Police department.”

Grey kept staring at Karrin, his expression utterly unreadable. “The loup-garou videotape. You were in it with the wizard.” He said.

“Now there’s an old memory,” I said. “That tape went missing.”

“Yes,” Grey said, his tone a bit sharper now. “But I don’t believe I was talking to you, was I?”

Everyone at the table went still, waiting to see how I’d react. I’d learned a lot of stuff from Mab, from Winter, and one of those things was to never let a predator see weakness.

I shrugged. “I should ask you, just how thick do you think that wall behind you is? Because when I send you flying through it, I’m not sure whether you’ll knock down a whole section, or just leave a perfect outline of yourself, Looney Tunes-style.”

Grey blinked. “Really? Barely been here five minutes and you already wanna see who’s bigger?”

I took another bite of my donut and gave Grey a shrug. “You’re not the toughest guy I’ve met. Not even the toughest this week.”

The air between us got thick with tension, like there was an invisible current running between me and Grey. Karrin sighed, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“That _was_ me in the video,” Karrin said from behind me.

Grey nodded. “You took a shot right past the wizard’s ear to take down that guy behind him. That took some guts.”

“I’m a better shot now,” Karrin replied.

Grey leaned back in his chair. “Damn. Both of you threatening me? Anyone else wanna join in while they’re at it?” He looked around the table. “Nicodemus, do you need the wizard for this job?”

“Unfortunately.”

“And what about Miss Murphy here?”

“She is…non-essential.”

Grey nodded. “Dresden, shall we table this discussion for later?”

“Fine by me,” I said. I turned to Nicodemus. “What’s this ass here for anyway?”

“I can do just about anything,” Grey said smoothly. “For this, I’ll be opening doors.”

That made Nicodemus’ features twist into a brief scowl of annoyance. “Yes, well. Unfortunately, we have hit something of a snag. It appears that our original plan to gain entrance to the Vault is no longer a viable option.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really? You’re actually worried about something, Nicky? What’s got you quaking in your boots?” I said, a little louder than strictly necessary. You know, just to be annoying.

Nicodemus gave me a smile that held none of the emotions a smile was supposed to, his eyes narrow. “I have done a great deal to set things up for this venture. The original plan was to use a Way to access the Vault. If you would care to give everyone a brief primer on the nature of Ways and how they open, Mr. Dresden?” he said, nodding at me.

I blinked at suddenly being put on the spot, but recovered quickly. “Um, right. Ways are passages between the mortal world and the Nevernever—the spirit world. Pretty much any point in the mortal world will open a Way to somewhere, as long as you know _how_. Ways connect places that have something in common. Like, if you wanted to open a Way to Hell for some absurd reason, you’d need to start out at a hellish place in the mortal world. Want a peaceful place in the Nevernever, use a peaceful place in the mortal world. Et cetera, et cetera. One reason Chicago has so much supernatural stuff going on is that it’s a crossroads. A big one. You can find just about anything you need here, make a Way to just about anywhere in the Nevernever you could think of.”

Nicodemus nodded again. “Precisely. And, since we are attempting to enter a secure vault in the Nevernever, we would have to make a Way from a secure facility of some sort in the mortal world. The original plan was to begin our job here,” he said, unrolling a set of blueprints. I looked at them, but I didn’t recognize the building.

Behind me, Karrin sucked in a sharp breath.

“Ah, you recognize it Miss Murphy?” Nicodemus said with an utterly insincere smile.

Karrin nodded, taking the empty seat to my right. “It’s a vault. One belonging to a lord of the underworld,” she said, looking at me with worried eyes.

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach, like I was at the top of a roller-coaster’s largest hill and it had just started going down. “Oh hell’s bells,” I breathed.

Karrin tapped one corner of the plans, where the building’s name and owner were written. “This is the Capristi Building,” she said. “It’s a mob bank, and it belongs to John Marcone, Accorded Baron of Chicago.”

Nicodemus nodded again. “Exactly. Since joining the Accords, Marcone had made himself a notoriously neutral party in supernatural politics. A number of supernatural beings and nations have entrusted him with a portion of their wealth. Marcone, in turn, has given his word to protect their belongings to the best of his ability.”

“Just who are we talking about, exactly?” Binder asked, his eyes still on the blueprints.

“Svartalfheim, the White Court, and Drakul, just to name a few,” Nicodemus replied. “And that is where the problem has come in. I have information that one of the patrons of this establishment will be visiting tomorrow, in person, to inspect his investment.”

“And that’s a problem?” Grey said. “Surely all of us together are capable of handling one man.”

“One _man_ would be no trouble,” Nicodemus said. “But the person in question is _not_ a simple mortal. Were we to assault the bank while Ferrovax was there, I think it safe to say that we would all come to a painful, messy end.”

I almost choked on my donut.

Ferrovax.

I’d met him years ago, at a masquerade ball thrown by a member of the Red Court. He’d sent me to my knees with a simple wave of his hand.

“Fuck,” I breathed, feeling the blood drain from my face.

Nicodemus glanced at me, his eyebrows raised in interest. “You’ve met him, Mr. Dresden?”

“Briefly. And yeah, going anywhere near him would be suicide,” I said. Grey nodded his assent.

“What’s so scary about this guy?” Binder asked. “I mean, given who we’re going to be robbing, how bad can he be?”

“Ferrovax is a Dragon,” I said, recalling what Bob had told me about Dragons years ago. “Not just some fire breathing lizard who likes gold. I’m talking capital-D dragon. They’re freaking elemental forces of the cosmos. Hell, I think even Ha—our target would have trouble with one.”

“Indeed,” Nicodemus said, rolling up the blueprints and placing them on a side table. “His presence means that we will have to resort to my backup plan, which carries considerably more risk than the original one.”

“The original plan,” I said, holding up a finger. “Which required breaking into a vault owned by a crime lord and Signatory of the Accords, is the less risky one?”

“Yes. Because the backup plan requires us to venture into the Labyrinth,” Nicodemus said, placing a weathered, leather-bound journal on the table and undoing the knotted leather cord that held it closed.

On the first page there was a rough design of a circular maze, made up of hundreds of twisting paths.

“The Labyrinth,” Karrin said flatly. “As in, ‘built by Daedalus, home of the Minotaur’? That Labyrinth?”

“Not quite,” Nicodemus said, flipping through the journal. “This is the second Labyrinth, built by Daedalus after his death. The story goes that our target eventually grew weary of heroes constantly entering his domain on some quest or another. So he had Daedalus, whose soul was already confined to Tartarus for slaying his nephew, build a Labyrinth even greater than his first one, in order to keep trespassers out of his realm. That is what we will be venturing into.”

“Hell’s freaking bells,” I said. “How are we even supposed to get there? Because I think catching a flight to Crete would take more time than we have.”

“Hardly. We can access it right here in Chicago, using a Way from a corresponding location here. Somewhere dark, hidden, underground.”

Karrin got it a second before I did. “Undertown,” she said. “You’re talking about Undertown.”

“Exactly. But there is another component. Simply opening a Way will not be enough. We need someone to help the connection along.”

I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like the next bit of Nicodemus’ plan.

“Hecate,” Deirdre said. “We will have to summon Hecate.”

Yep, I definitely didn’t like it.

“Hecate,” I said. “Goddess of witches, crossroads, and ghosts?”

She nodded. “I know the rites to call upon her. Binder will have to shape the ritual, given his talent in calling up entities from the Nevernever.”

“Hold on,” Binder protested, turning to stare at Deirdre. “I can summon up some spirits and demons, sure. But a goddess? That’s a bit beyond me.”

“I will be the one contacting her. All you will have to do is form the channel,” she said calmly. “Father, I have almost everything I need for the ritual.”

“Very well. Take Grey and go get whatever else you need.”

“Hold on,” I said. “Whatever you need, it’s not something that you could just buy, is it? Otherwise you’d already have it.”

“Obviously,” Deirdre said.

“So you’re going to have to do something that draws attention. Something that’s going to lead to people getting hurt.”

“Do you have a point?” Grey asked.

“Yeah. This is my city. I don’t want people getting hurt by any of you people. Besides, if you do something that draws attention, the target might figure out what we’re up to. Better to play it safe. I’ll get you whatever it is you need.”

Nicodemus met my eyes for a long moment, but I looked away first. I had no desire to soulgaze him. “I must agree with Mr. Dresden. Subtlety is the better option at this point. If our target becomes aware of this plan, our journey through the Labyrinth will become decidedly more difficult. Dresden and Valmont, you will accompany Deirdre and Grey on this errand.”

“Seriously? A bit many people for subtlety,” I said. “I mean, Valmont I can understand since she’s a thief and all, and Deirdre probably needs to pick out the right stuff for the ritual, but why him?” I jerked my head at Grey.

“Trust me, I’ll be a lot more help on this than you will,” Grey drawled, twisting his neck with a series of cracking sounds.

“Mister Grey is quite right, Dresden. Unless, of course, you no longer wish to lend me your support,” Nicodemus said, smiling paternally.

Dammit. I took a deep breath. With Grey and Deirdre along, there was no way things would be smooth and nonviolent. But I didn’t have a choice, not if I wanted to uphold Mab’s honor.

“No,” I said stiffly. “I’ll be fine with them.”

“What exactly do you need for this ritual?” Grey asked, diffusing the tension between Nicodemus and I a little.

“A moon rock,” Deirdre replied.

“Not moonstone, then?”

“No. For a ritual of this magnitude, we need an actual piece of the moon.”

“And where,” I asked, “are we supposed to find a moon rock in Chicago?”

“The planetarium,” she said, with the tone of one explaining the patently obvious.

“Ah.”

———————————————

The Adler Planetarium was more or less right on the shore of Lake Michigan, only a quarter of a mile from the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum.

Both of which had seen some heavy magic use when I’d been there.

“What is it with you guys and museums, anyway?” I asked Deirdre as I pulled the white van into a parking space. “I mean, last time you were in town you trashed the Shedd, and now you’re going after the planetarium? Did a museum tour guide steal your lunch money or something?”

“As I recall,” she said primly, “You were hardly innocent in the destruction at the aquarium. And I’m not the one who relocated a dinosaur skeleton to the middle of the college campus.”

I blinked. Had she just made a joke? I’d assumed that Nic and Tessa had squashed all the humor that didn’t involve torture and dismemberment out of her.

“You, uh, know about that?” I said.

“Word travels, wizard.”

The parking garage was mostly empty, something that I was immensely thankful for. The fewer people that were here, the less of a problem we’d have stealing a freaking moon rock.

Hell’s bells, I can’t believe I actually thought that sentence.

Valmont stopped us before we got out of the car. “Alright, we can’t just go barging in there. I know this is last-minute, but I do have some professional standards.”

I nodded in agreement. “Yeah. The more of a plan we have, the better off we’ll be. I’m assuming it’s too much to hope that you might’ve brainstormed how to rob this place at some point?” I asked her.

“I try to stay away from museums,” she replied. “Most stuff is just too easily identifiable, and the stuff that isn’t won’t sell for enough to justify the trouble I’d have to go to.”

“That’s what I figured,” I said. “Deirdre, what about you? Do you have any ideas that don’t involve transforming and slicing your way through everything?”

She glared at me, but didn’t respond.

“I could go,” Grey said. “I’ll transform into one of the guards, get the rock, and get out.”

“You’re a shapeshifter, then.”

Grey nodded.

“And what if someone sees two of the same guard walking around? You don’t think they’d notice that something’s up?”

“Well, there’s an obvious solution to that,” Grey said. I glared at him.

“No. As long as I’m here, you’re not killing anyone in my city. Got that?”

“Why?” Grey asked.

“Why what?”

“One death? Of someone you don’t even know? Why should you give a damn whether he lives or dies?” Grey said, his eyes closed.

“Because killing people isn’t right,” I said firmly.

“You’re being serious?” Grey said, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. “Bit of an odd rule, considering your reputation. I’ve heard about you, Dresden. You’ve killed before.”

“Doesn’t mean that I like doing it. I’ll kill if I have to, if I’ve got no other choice. But if I don’t have to kill someone, I won’t. It’s easier. Smarter.”

“Smarter?” Deirdre asked from the backseat.

“You kill someone, there’ll always be someone who takes it personally. Probably a lot of someones. Sure, you get rid of one enemy by killing him, but you end up with a few new ones. In the long run it’s better to avoid killing people.”

“And you really think that some random security guard is gonna have someone with the guts and the resources to come after you for revenge?” Grey asked.

“If nothing else, it’ll get the cops and the FBI interested. If that happens, our target might catch on to what we’re doing, and the whole thing falls apart.”

Valmont nodded in agreement. “Besides, killing someone just to steal a rock? That’s just plain overkill.”

“Mortal authorities? Easy enough to dispatch,” Deirdre scoffed. I rolled my eyes at her and sighed.

“Yeah, maybe. But if you kill the first group they send, then the next ones won’t just have their standard gear. I’m not exactly up to date with current events, but even I know that the police have been getting more and more militarized in the US. They won’t just come at you with handguns and riot gear. They’ll have armored vehicles, tanks, and who knows what else.”

“You may have a point,” Grey said, giving me a small nod of acknowledgement. “But tell me, wizard, does it give you some sort of satisfaction to protect a random civilian you’ve never even met?”

“Yeah,” I said, “it does.”

Grey frowned in thought.

“Enough talking,” Deirdre hissed. “Let’s get this over with.”

Valmont held up a hand. “I know you can just barge in there and rip all the cases apart with your hair or whatever,” she said, “but I do have some professional pride. We’ll go in, make a few circuits of the place to get the layout. That should give me enough time to come up with a plan. Grey, you said you’re a shapeshifter. Can you alter your eyes to see any laser systems? There probably won’t be any, not in a public place like this, but I’d prefer to make sure.”

Grey nodded. “Easy enough.”

“Good. You’ll come with me, tell me where they are. Dresden, you and Miss Archleone keep a lookout just in case. After last night I’d rather be forewarned if any other supernatural groups are gunning for us.”

Deidre’s mouth twisted into a scowl, and I mirrored the expression. “You sure you wanna be stuck with this jerk?” I asked, nodding my head at Grey.

“Indeed. Why should I go with the wizard?” Deirdre asked sourly.

“Because I need Grey to point out anything I can’t see, and because if we do need to fight you two would do the most damage to anything that attacks,” Valmont said. 

I kept scowling, but Anna’s plan was solid.

“Alright,” I sighed. “Let’s go.”

———————————————

The planetarium wasn’t much different from other’s that I’d seen, when you got right down to it. It had the usual dome in the center, where they’d show documentaries or whatever. The rest of the planetarium surrounded the central dome in a semicircle, with windows looking out onto Lake Michigan.

It was when we got to the ticket counter that I realized a problem.

“Um, I kinda don’t have any money for a ticket,” I whispered. Deirdre gave me another glare.

“Why not?” she hissed.

“Look, I’ve been living out on a deserted island for the last year or so, and before that I was in Arctis Tor. And before that my apartment got burned down. So I haven’t exactly needed any cash lately,” I said, glaring right back.

Valmont sighed and handed me a couple twenties, which I thanked her for and slipped into my duster pocket.

After the ticket counter came security.

“Sir,” the uniformed guard said, “I’m going to need you to leave your walking stick at the front. You can collect it when you leave.”

I sighed, sounding as exasperated as I possibly could. “Look, man, I kinda need this to help me walk. My leg’s not in great shape,” I said, shifting my posture and stiffening my injured leg slightly. The guard sighed.

“Whatever. Just be careful with that thing. And if you’re seeing anything in the theater, you’ll have to leave it at the door,” he said, waving us through into the planetarium proper. I kept going, walking with a slight limp until we were out of the guard’s sight.

Valmont and Grey walked ahead of Deirdre and I, both of them acting perfectly casual. I tried to follow their lead, but having Nicodemus’ psycho daughter next to me made that tricky. So I compromised, extending my magical senses to check for anything out of the ordinary.

———————————————

After a couple circuits, Valmont signaled us that it was time to go ahead. The planetarium was all but empty by now, and Grey had just seen one of the guards going on a lunch break.

We stood around the glass case, staring at the moon rock.

“So, how’re we going to do this?” I asked Valmont.

“Smash and grab,” she said with a sigh. “No time for anything more elegant. Grey, keep an eye out. Dresden, mess up the security or something, like you did with the lights at the hotel last night. Deirdre, open the case.”

I began to draw in my will, gathering and shaping the power. With a mutter of _“hexus,”_ I released it, sending a pulse of disruptive energy out from my body.

Every light in the building went off. The alarms started to sound, but they died off almost immediately.

And just as Deirdre started to shift into her demonic form, I felt a faint shiver of energy in the air. On the other end of the room, the air began to twist and bulge, looking like a whirlpool of black ink.

The portal to the Nevernever widened into a ragged-edged oval. Without any lighting in the planetarium, I could only discern the edges of the gate from the sullen red light spilling out.

My stomach dropped as I recognized the feeling of the energy. I’d felt it twice before, in a mine in New Mexico and in the Raith Deeps. The stench of rotten meat and mildew hit my nose as it wafted out into the planetarium.

A squad of ghouls filed out of the Way. They weren’t even bothering to look human, the claws on their feet scraping against the floor as they moved, mouths open wide to display their yellowed fangs. 

After the ghouls came a small woman, shorter even than Karrin. Her height and her rounded features made her look childish, a look that was ruined by the hate that filled her eyes. 

Deirdre’s eyes went wide, and a small breath of surprise escaped her lips.

“Mother,” she whispered.

Tessa’s gaze fell on me, eyes wide with hate and madness.

“Leave my daughter unharmed!” she snarled, pointing a chitin-covered hand at us. “Kill the rest!”

Hell’s freaking Bells


	4. Family Feud

I slammed my staff against the floor, focusing my will through it as I shouted, _“Glacivalare!”_

A wave of frigid air shot forth, hardening into a three foot thick wall of ice that walled off our half of the room from Tessa and her ghouls. They started hammering on it almost immediately, and I wasn’t optimistic about it holding. Maybe if those two super-ghouls weren’t there it would’ve been enough to keep them away from us, but I doubted it.

“Come on!” I snarled, already turning towards the exit. From the corner of my eye I saw Valmont stuffing the moon rock into her purse as she followed, Deirdre and Grey close behind.

“What the hell is your mother doing here?” I asked, glancing at her.

“I don’t know! She was supposed to be in Iran!” Deirdre snapped back. Her human eyes were still wide with surprise and confusion, but the demonic ones on her forehead were flicking this way and that, checking for anything we could use to escape.

“Dresden, not to interrupt, but this place is circular,” Grey said, gesturing toward the entrance. And I could already hear the sound of claws against the floor coming from that direction.

 _“Glacivalare!”_ I shouted again, pointing my staff towards the entrance. Just as the ice wall started forming, I saw a ghouls coming forward. It let out a shriek of animalistic rage and leapt forward. 

The second wall finished forming just a moment too late, the ghoul sailing through the air straight at me. I heard two meaty thumps, as a couple of its companions slammed into the wall, unable to follow their comrade.

I drew in my will and called up my shield, forming a plane of shimmering silver-blue light between me and the ghoul. But I hadn’t had time to brace myself properly. When the ghoul hit the shield it drove me back a couple feet, making me feel like I’d just been hit by a rushing linebacker.

The ghoul scrambled to its feet, snarling at me.

There was a sound of something hissing through the air, a flash of dim light on metal, and the ghoul’s head fell from its shoulders. Dark, thick blood spilled from the stump of its neck, splattering on the floor as it collapsed.

Deirdre pulled the hair-blade back towards herself, schooling her face into an impassive mask.

But something was wrong. I could see a slight tinge of worry in her eyes.

What in the hell was going on here?

“Wizard, do you have another way out of here? You’ve blocked off our other exits, and I can already hear your walls cracking,” she snapped, hair spread out around her like a cloud of serpents waiting to strike.

I nodded, and touched the pentacle amulet around my neck. One fingertip pressed against the ruby in the center of the pendant.

I heard a woman’s voice, so clear that it could’ve been coming from right beside me.

“Open a Way at the wall, and go through into the Orrery,” my mother’s voice said. I nodded to myself, turned, and pointed my staff at the wall. I couldn’t remember what an orrery was, but I was pretty sure the word didn’t mean “death-trap” and in any case it was better than waiting to get torn to pieces by Tessa and her ghouls.

 _“Aparturum!”_ I whispered, slashing my staff downwards. The air tore open, and a wave of warm air blew through the portal.

“Come on!” I shouted, gesturing at the Way impatiently. All three of them stepped through, though Valmont was eyeing the rent in the air with a slightly tense expression. I had no idea whether she was more worried about going into the Nevernever, or the ghouls that wanted to strip the flesh from our bones. I followed them through, closing the Way with a minor effort of will and a whisper of _“disperdorius.”_ Only once the Way was shut did I turn to look at where we were.

“Holy crap,” I breathed, my eyes widening as I took it all in.

The room was a massive dome, probably the length of a football field from end to end. The centerpiece of the room was a sphere of shimmering crystal, held aloft by a set of spindly mechanical arms that emerged from gaps in the floor. The globe was large enough that Karrin would’ve been able to stand inside it comfortably. Those little arms shouldn’t have been able to support its weight, not without snapping and dropping it onto the marble floor.

“Where the hell did you take us, Dresden?” Grey asked, actually displaying something other than calm smugness.

“Away from the ghouls and Deirdre’s psychotic mother. Now come on, let’s keep moving,” I replied. “Tessa’s got plenty of magical power of her own. I dunno how good she is at opening Ways—”

“We have a few minutes at best,” Deirdre said. I nodded at her.

“Figures,” I said with a sigh, touching the gem again.

“Cross the chamber, and under no circumstances should you touch any of the mechanisms. Go through the doorway marked with the constellation Hydra,” she instructed. I looked around, but the only things that might qualify as ‘mechanisms’ were the spindly arms holding the crystal sphere aloft. Easy enough to avoid touching those.

“Anyone know what the constellation Hydra looks like?”

“A long, zig-zag-ing line with a small pentagon at one end,” Deirdre answered. She looked at me oddly, both sets of eyes narrowed in thought and her lips pressed together in a thin line. I nodded, and started across the room.

As soon as I crossed from the rough stone of the doorway to the smooth marble of the chamber, the floor began to move. The entire floor was a series of concentric rings, broken up into squares of black and white marble. I leapt back into the doorway, watching the floor warily.

Each ring started to rotate, alternating between clockwise and counterclockwise. The outermost one was going about the speed of one of the moving walkways at O’Hare, but the next one was moving faster. And the next one faster still. The pattern continued, and I noticed that the ring right around the central dais was moving so fast that the black and white marble blurred together into a uniform grey.

Of course, that wasn’t the only thing happening in the room. A moving floor would’ve been easy enough to deal with. Tricky, but not overly so. The walls of the chamber were moving too, sections of them opening up as more mechanical limbs unfolded and stretched out into the room, each one bearing a section of curved metal and crystal. The arms started to connect the objects, and a series of spheres began to take shape.

I recognized one of them, a sphere made of blue and green metal, with swirls of white at the top and bottom.

“It’s a model of the solar system,” I breathed, recognizing the replica planets for what they were now.

“An orrery,” Deirdre said, nodding.

Oh, _that’s_ what an Orrery was. I remembered seeing one in Aleron LaFortier’s quarters at Edinburgh, when I’d visited them after his murder. Of course, that one had been a lot smaller.

The floor was slowing down now, as the planets settled into their orbits.

I started forward, keeping my eyes on the floor ahead of me. My path ended up snaking back and forth as I avoided the spots where machinery poked out of gaps in the floor.

“Come on,” I said, nodding towards the far wall. “And whatever you do, don’t touch the machinery.”

“Why? What’ll it do?” Grey asked, looking around the room. His eyes flicking back and forth to take in every detail.

“No idea,” I replied, “and I’d rather not find out.”

Valmont came first, her steps light and sure as she followed the path I’d taken. Grey followed her, still scanning the room. Deirdre brought up the rear. She’d shifted back to her human form for the moment, but her hair kept moving, like there was a breeze that didn’t affect anything else.

We’d just passed the central dais when I felt the air shiver with power. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I didn’t even bother to turn around and see what was happening.

“Run!” I shouted, breaking into a sprint. As I ran, I leapt over a section of the Orrery’s machinery with a cry of, “PARKOUR!”

Back at the doorway, one of the ghouls let out a hunting cry that made my blood run cold. The others answered, their roars echoing around the chamber, filling it with a hideous cacophony.

Ghouls are pretty damn effective as far as supernatural muscle goes. They’re strong, fast, tougher to kill than a cockroach, and they eat every part of their kills, so there’s not much to clean up when they’re done. The downside is, sometimes they’re _dumb_ muscle.

One of them must’ve bumped into something. There was a low grinding sound from somewhere below, loud and deep enough that I felt the vibration in the soles of my feet. Even the ghouls stopped moving, their eyes darting all over the room. The rumbling grew louder, and the arms holding the various lenses, began to move. They folded and retracted, sliding into slots that opened in the central dais.

The rumbling died down, and the ghouls started forward again, black drool dripping onto the floor from their open mouths.

“That’s it?” Valmont said. “From the way you warned us, I was hoping it’d take out a couple of them.”

I adjusted my grip on my staff, and began to draw in my will. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Deirdre shifting into her demonic form, claws scraping against the marble floor as they lengthened.

One of the ghouls leapt forward, soaring through the air toward us with its claws outstretched.

The Orrery’s machinery sprang to life again, barely making a sound as it moved through the air. Something struck the ghoul at the apex of its arc, carrying it away in a blur of metal. It took me a moment to figure out what the hell was happening, and it only clicked when I saw a rust-red sphere fly past us on some sort of rail.

It was a model of the solar system, the kind that people made back when they thought Earth was the center of the universe.

Metal models of the planets circled the room on rails, each one on a slightly different axis. Even as I watched, one ghoul got too close to Saturn as it passed, and its rings sliced the ghoul’s head from its shoulders like a guillotine

Tessa let out a wordless howl of rage and pointed at me, lighting gathering at her fingertip for a second before it surged forward with a wail and the scent of ozone. I slammed my will down through my staff, bringing up my shield with a panicked cry of, _“Defendarius!”_

But I needn’t have bothered. The bolt of lightning veered off course, striking the banded surface of Jupiter. Tessa snarled, and sent out a jet of blood-red light. It spiraled around the room, avoiding Jupiter’s gravitational pull.

I didn’t have time to call up another shield so soon, and I had a nasty suspicion that I wouldn’t be able to block this spell anyway.

So I did something really stupid.

I held out my left hand towards the oncoming spell, focusing on the flow of energy within my body. As the magic touched my fingertips, I drew in a deep breath and _pulled_ Tessa’s spell into myself.

Instantly, I felt like my insides were on fire. As the energy flowed up my arm, bruises appeared all over it. Panicking, I forced it down the moment it reached my shoulder, directing it down into my stomach and then up my right side. I didn’t know what would’ve happened if I’d let that spell pass through my heart, but I suspected it wouldn’t have been pretty.

I blocked out the pain, something I’d had way too much practice at, and sent Tessa’s spell down my right arm in a wave of white-hot agony. The crimson bolt lanced out from my fingertips, leaving me feeling like I’d just run a marathon through a field of cacti. While getting pummeled by Mike Tyson.

The spell traveled in a straight line this time, streaking back at Tessa faster than it had come at me. Her eyes widened, and she barked out something in a guttural tongue while making a yanking motion.

One of the ghouls flew towards her, like she’d pulled on an invisible lasso. The spell hit the ghoul as it passed in front of Tessa, tearing into him like a massive claw. It entered under the sternum, and tore out the entire front of the ghoul’s ribcage, destroying its chest with a shower of gore and the crack of splintering bone.

The ghoul’s corpse landed with a wet, meaty ’smack’.

Hell’s bells. I might want to figure out a wizard-friendly way to get x-rayed after this, because there was no way my insides were intact after redirecting that thing.

“Kill the wizard!” Tessa screeched at the ghouls. They leapt into action, bounding across the floor in great, distance-eating strides. With a snarl of frustration, Deirdre grabbed me around the waist with one arm, and launched us upwards with her hair. More of the metal strips grabbed onto Jupiter, wrapping around its rings and hauling us up. The model kept ascending, taking us out of reach of the ghouls for the moment. With a few swipes of her claws, Deirdre gouged out some hand-and-footholds for us.

“Don’t suppose you could reason with her?” I asked Deirdre, panting. My arms already felt like I’d gotten a billion paper cuts and taken a swim in a pool of lemon juice, and my stomach felt like it was full of pissed-off wasps. Deirdre shook her head, her human eyes glancing down in something like regret.

“I doubt it,” she said. “Will you still be able to open the Way out of here with all this?” She gestured a the whirling models of planets and stars.

“Not sure,” I said, touching my mother’s gemstone again.

“Through the Hydra doorway, down the hallway, and right at the fork. Proceed until you reach a mural of a silver fountain, and open portal there,” my mother’s voice said. I turned back to Deirdre.

“I should be able to, once we get out of the room. But we need to deal with the ghouls, or they’ll catch us from behind.”

Deirdre nodded her assent, adjusting her grip on Jupiter.

Tessa was still trying to pick me off from a distance, firing bolts of lightning up at me. Her persistence didn’t seem to be doing anything to help, as Jupiter just kept absorbing the blasts, sending small tingles down my arms and making my hair stand up.

The ghouls, meanwhile, had switched their focus to Grey and Valmont once they realized that we’d gotten out of their reach for the moment. Grey was holding off most of the ghouls, shapeshifting his limbs into various forms as fast as I could blink. He slammed a large, clublike fist into one, sending it flying maybe ten feet to land in a crumpled heap. As he followed through on the punch, his arm changed again, creating a scythe-like blade that he swept at another ghoul’s ankles, slicing through them and knocking it to the floor. He’d shaped his other hand into a massive plate of bone or carapace, shielding valmont from the Ghouls.

Jupiter reached the apex of its arc, and began to descend, picking up speed as it went.

Deirdre leapt off when we were still fifteen or so feet up, her hair slamming into the floor and catching her before she hit. With a few hair-assisted leaps, she joined Grey near the doorway, and started ripping through the ghouls like a deli slicer.

I, on the other hand, waited until the floor began to open up for Jupiter to pass below.

“Parkour!” I yelled as I jumped, pushing off the model planet as best I could. I rolled as I landed, but it only did so much to lessen the impact. My knees flared with pain, and the wound on my calf reminded me that it was there with a flash of white-hot agony. 

My staff flew out of my hand and went skidding across the floor. I climbed to my feet, realigning my mental shields to block out the pain.

 _“Ventas Servitas!”_ I shouted, beckoning at my staff. A brief gust of wind picked it up and sent it flying to me. The wood slapped against my hand, the weight comfortable and familiar in my grip.

I spun around, hearing a ghoul’s hunting cry. It was running at me, having managed to get past Grey and Deirdre’s tag-team of death.

 _“Infriga!”_ I snarled, pointing my staff at it. The runes along its length blazed with blue-green light.

My spell hit the ghoul head-on, a blast of freezing air and razor sharp shards of ice.

_“Forzare!”_

A lance of kinetic force struck the flash-frozen ghoul and shattered ti, sending chunks of it out across the floor.

“Dresden!” Valmont shouted. I turned to look, and saw her pointing at one of the ghouls that Grey had taken down.

It was moving. Which was pretty disturbing given its legs had been sliced off and its head bashed in. Even as I watched, the ghoul’s black blood started to flow back towards its body.

Crap.

I’d seen ghouls do that once before, when Vitto Malvora had summoned them into the Raith Deeps. But those ghouls had been obvious, hug and thick-browed, like prehistoric ancestors of normal ghouls.

Hell’s bells.

I ran over to the others, who were looking at the ghouls re-assembling themselves with varying degrees of disgust.

“We need to get out of here before they pull themselves back together!” I shouted, pointing at the doorway as I ran. “Deirdre, you bring up the rear and try to stall your mom if you can!”

They all bolted forward, falling me down the torch lit hallway. The walls were covered in colorful murals, but I didn’t stop to look at them. There was a steadily approaching buzzing sound behind us, and I turned to see Tessa, in full mantis-form, flying toward us like a demonic guided missile.

Deirdre spread her hair out, blocking her mom from getting past with a web of razor-sharp steel.

Tessa said something, and Deirdre responded, both of them speaking what I thought might’ve been Greek. They argued back and forth at a rapid pace, voices growing louder and louder.

“Not to interrupt your family reunion, but the ghouls are coming!” I said loudly, giving DeeDee a pointed look.

In the second that Deirdre’s head was turned, Tessa struck, slashing at her daughter’s stomach with a claw wreathed in blazing hellfire. Deirdre blocked the strike easily, her hair darting forward and forming a small shield. But that gave Tessa the opening she wanted, and she fired another of those red disemboweling-bolts through the gap in her daughter’s hair.

Grey pulled Anna down to the floor with lighting speed, and I called up the strongest shield I could muster, drawing on the Winter Mantle. On its own, I didn’t know if the Winter-infused shield would stand up to the destructive might of Tessa’s hellfire. So I added a little something extra, reaching for the place within me where the Soulfire awaited.

The glacial blue-green light of winter mixed with the blazing silver of Soulfire, and my shield became something more. It was like a wall of shining chrome, the light pulsing in time with my heartbeat. Ripples of crimson spread out across the shield from where Tessa’s spell hit, and I felt a wave of burning pain in my chest.

I dropped the shield, sagging at the sudden loss of energy. But Tessa was already shaping another spell, and I didn’t think I had another shield like that in me.

I aimed my staff at her and rammed my will down it, along with another burst of Winter and Soulfire, roaring, _“FUEGO!”_

The fire lanced out from my staff, flaring as hot as a bolt of lightning and howling like an arctic blizzard.

Tessa brought up a hasty shield of her own, but it didn’t do much. She might’ve been over a millennia old, but she wasn’t very big, and the force of my fireball slammed into her like a line drive, sending her flying backwards with a shriek of rage. She flew out into the main chamber and hit one of the ghouls in the head, snapping its neck backwards.

Deirdre’s hair blurred into motion, slashing at the stone walls and ceiling like a demented sushi chef. Chunks of dark rock crashed to the floor, blocking the doorway.

We ran down the hallway, turning right when the passage forked. I barely slowed down at the turn, bouncing off the wall and adding my shoulder to the list of body parts that were currently in pain.

I spotted the mural about twenty meters along on the right wall, a simple fountain, gleaming silver in the torchlight.

 _“Aparturum,”_ I murmured, slashing my staff downwards through the air.

———————————————

We came out in Millennium Park, right beneath the big silver bean. Valmont drew her coat closer around her, and I did the same with my duster. Grey and DeeDee didn’t seem to notice the cold, which seemed incredibly unfair since I was the Winter Knight.

“What the hell was that about?” Valmont asked acidly, glaring daggers at Deirdre.

“None of your concern,” she snapped.

“I beg to differ,” Grey said. “If you’ve got something personal that’s going to interfere with the job, we need to be aware of it.”

“I…I don’t know what she’s doing here,” Deirdre admitted, “she was supposed to be in Iran.”

“Ok, the fact that some of you demonic assholes are doing something there does not make me any less worried,” Valmont said.

“Agreed,” Grey said, looking around. “We’d better get out of here and back to base, pronto.”

“Yeah, the van’s back at the planetarium,” I reminded him. “And even if anyone here had a cellphone, it’s probably fried by now thanks to all the magic.”

Valmont and Grey both tried theirs, to no avail. I, being a mature adult, did _not_ say “I told you so.”

Deirdre rolled her eyes and started walking towards the parking log, not waiting for us to catch up. She walked up and down the rows, looking for…something.

She pointed at an older car, some sort of Subaru.

“Grey?”

Without a word, he stepped up and stuck his finger in the lock, the digit shrinking and twisting. The lock clicked, and he pulled the door open with an exaggerated bow.

———————————————

The trip back to the slaughterhouse passed in silence, each of us staring out the window, lost in thought. Except for Grey, who kept his eyes on the road since he was the one driving. Snow swirled around outside, coating the buildings and sidewalk in a layer of white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out I already had this chapter written, and I kind of forgot. I'd planned to make a few revisions, but looking back I'm satisfied with it.
> 
> As for what the hell the Orrery is...honestly I mostly just wanted an interesting place for a fight, and got inspired by the Dwemer observatory you go to in one of the quests in Skyrim.


	5. Unveiled

I must’ve looked worse than I felt because Karrin’s eyes widened when she saw me descending the stairs to the slaughterhouse floor. She got up from the worktable she’d been sitting at, meeting me at the bottom of the stairs.

“Harry? What happened?” she asked, giving me a once over, her eyes tinged with worry.

“Good news, we got the moon rock,” I said.

“And the bad news?”

“Polonius Lartessa’s in town, and it looks like she wants to stop the job from happening.”

“Someone doesn’t want Nicodemus to succeed,” Karrin said drily, “what a shock.”

I shrugged. “If she’s trying to stop Nick, I’d like to know why. Besides, she probably wants to kill me.”

“Well, she _is_ married to him,” Karrin pointed out.

“True, but this feels important. Hell’s bells, I hate being in the dark like this.”

“Don’t we all. But seriously, Harry,” Karrin said, stepping in front of me and meeting my eyes for a moment. “You’re covered in bruises and cuts. What the hell’d she do to you?”

“I…kinda did that to myself, actually,” I said sheepishly. She sighed.

“Oh, I can’t _wait_ to hear this one.”

“Redirected a spell by channeling it through myself. It turned out to be a bad idea. Still better than getting hit by it, though,” I said.

I took a look over the worktable that Karrin had been at when I arrived. It was covered in weapons. Mostly Uzis, with a bunch of machetes and hatchets thrown in. I raised my eyebrows.

“These all for Binder’s minions?” I asked. Karrin nodded as she checked one of the guns, manually cycling the action.

“Yeah. Thirty uzis and assorted close combat weapons,” she said with a grimace.

“The Labyrinth’s gonna be awful crowded if we’re bringing that many of Binder’s goons with us,” I noted

“No kidding. I’m not looking forward to being in close quarters with those things,” she said, a slight shudder racing down her spine. I nodded, remembering what those demons had done during my last encounter with Binder. I’d seen one of them tear a man’s head from his shoulders with disturbingly little effort.

“Christ, Harry, this many guns…” Karrin whispered.

“Yeah. But we’ll be in Undertown or in the Nevernever. Pretty low chance of innocent bystanders getting caught in the crossfire.”

“Yeah. God, I don’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if we were going with the bank plan.”

“How screwed up are our lives when going into an underground maze full of who-knows-what, so that we can open a portal into an even more dangerous, monster-filled maze, is the more appealing option?” I asked, shaking my head. Karrin didn’t say anything, but the corners of her mouth twitched, and some of the tension she’d been carrying in her shoulders melted away.

“Still, I’m really hoping we won’t be getting into a gunfight in Undertown,” Karrin said. “I mean, that’s just asking to get hit by a ricochet.”

“Relax, love,” Binder said, approaching the worktable with a sandwich in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. “My lads can handle weapons just fine.”

“Don’t call me ‘love’, Tinwhistle,” Karrin snapped, glaring at Binder with a gaze as hard and cold as a glacier. Binder ignored the retort, but his posture changed subtly, his shoulders tensing up. He turned to me, looking me up and down with a raised eyebrow.

“I take it the museum robbery encountered complications? Didn’t think regular security would leave you looking like that,”

“It wasn’t the museum security. It was Nicodemus’s wife,” I said.

“Hold a moment,” he said, holding up two fingers. He walked away, returning a couple moments later with Hannah Ascher at his heels. Whatever she’d been up to, it had been hard work. She was panting, her skin slick with sweat, and her face and hands smudged with ash or soot.

“Alright, go on,” Binder said, waving his hand at me.

“We were almost in the clear, when Nicodemus’s wife showed up with a squad of ghouls and tried to turn Valmont, Grey, and me into horror movie victims.”

Binder shook his head.

“Women,” he sighed, drawing twin glares from Hannah and Karrin. Once again, he shrugged it off. “I’m a century older than any of you lot. I stand by what I said.”

“So she wanted everyone except Deirdre dead?” Ascher asked.

“Yeah. They had an argument at one point, but I have no idea what they were saying. I think they were speaking Greek. Tessa ordered the ghouls not to harm DeeDee, though.”

“Why would his wife try to screw this up, though?” Ascher asked. 

I’d been asking myself the same question ever since we escaped the Nevernever.

“The money?” Binder suggested, with a longing expression on his face. I shook my head.

“Money’s not her thing. Besides, she’s almost as old as Nicodemus. She’s had centuries to put together her own fortune.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Binder said, “means it’s personal.”

“The marriage isn’t a happy one, then?” Ascher asked. I snorted.

“That’s putting it mildly. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but apparently they work against each other as often as they work with each other.”

“Huh,” Binder grunted. “How’d they end up with a kid, then?”

I love it when people give me such perfect setups.

“Well, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much…” I said, my words dripping with saccharine condescension. Binder gave me a withering look.

“Prat. But this complicates things.”

“Not the only complication,” Ascher said in a low voice, nodding towards the goat pen. I did a quick headcount.

“Eight left,” I said, “It’s eating one every meal.”

All of us looked at each other, probably thinking the same thing; what the hell did Nicodemus recruit that could eat that much and still go completely undetected?

“Ash, a word?” Binder said, nodding toward the other end of the slaughterhouse floor. The two of them departed, heads close and voices low. Karrin tracked them with a steady gaze.

“What do you think they’re talking about?”

“Same as us,” I said with a shrug, “trying to figure out when everything’s gonna go down in flames, and how they’re gonna get out in one piece.”

“They won’t be the ones to start something, though,” Karrin said. “Not unless they’re already guaranteed an escape with their loot.”

“Yeah, Binder’s a mercenary, through and through,” I said, eyes narrowing as a thought occurred to me. “Unless that’s only what he wants us to think.”

“You said that most wizards get pretty set in their ways once they get to his age, though,” Karrin said.

“Yeah, but I’ve only met the guy once. I might have read him wrong,” I said with a frown.

“That’s what this whole thing’s gonna boil down to, huh?” She replied. “Figuring out everyone’s motivations.”

“Pretty much.”

“Well then, we’re probably screwed,” Karrin chuckled, “Your motivations aren’t exactly subtle, Harry.” She took a seat at the worktable again, sighing as she looked over the ammo and empty clips for the Uzis.

“Need some help with that?” I asked, sitting down beside her. Karrin nodded and passed me a stack of clips.

We worked in comfortable silence, the motions quickly becoming robotic with repetition. It took us a while, even with speed-loaders. There were one hundred and twenty clips, which came out to something like thirty-eight hundred bullets. Trust me, I counted.

We’d just finished when footsteps echoed around the slaughterhouse, approaching us. I looked up.

It was Nicodemus, marching towards us with Deirdre at his side and a pair of squires behind him. I focused on Deirdre, trying to find any sign that our encounter with her mother had affected her.

I might as well have been looking at a mannequin.

“The weapons are ready?” Nicodemus asked as he walked past, not even slowing down.

“All set,” Karrin replied.

“Good. To the conference table. It’s time to discuss the next stage of the plan.”

—————————————

Grey took the seat next to me at the table, still looking utterly unfazed by the morning’s events.

“Where’d you learn how to hot-wire a car?” I asked him.

“That wasn’t hot-wiring,” Grey replied. “I had a key.” He held up his hand and wiggled his fingers.

Hell’s bells, shapeshifting was weird. I mean, I knew some werewolves, but I’d never been able to wrap my head around the type of magic necessary for that. And the Alphas were human. Grey’s shapeshifting was different, more instinctive.

“Gentlemen, if we could focus on the matter at hand?” Nicodemus said, taking his seat at the head of the table. “We’ll make things quick, and then break for more preparations, if there are no objections?”

There was a general murmur of agreement as Deirdre went around the table, handing out folders with GOAL printed on the front.

“As we discussed this morning, the original plan is no longer an option. Thusly, some of your roles in the operation have been altered.”

“I was going to ask about that,” Valmont said, “I mean, you recruited me because you needed a safecracker. Doesn’t seem like that’ll be necessary where we’re going.”

“Quite the contrary. Do keep in mind that the Labyrinth was created by Daedalus. There will undoubtedly be a wide assortment of traps for you to disarm. You’ll have ample opportunity to earn your keep.”

Valmont nodded, evidently satisfied with the answer. And I had to admit, Nicodemus had a point. I mean, Daedalus had built all kinds of stuff. Like an _extremely_ realistic mechanical cow suit for the queen of Crete.

“Each of you brings something to the table,” Nicodemus said, “something that we need to reach our final destination. The manor of the Lord of the Underworld, Vault Seven.”

“You mean Ha—,”

“If we could _avoid_ speaking his name until the job is done, Mr. Dresden?” Nicodemus said with a long-suffering sigh. “Or would you prefer that he be ready and waiting for us tomorrow?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand. He was probably being paranoid. What with movies, tv, books, and college courses based on Greek myths, Hades probably heard his name tens of thousands of times per day.

Saying the name of a powerful supernatural entity is like sending them a page. The Greek gods especially probably didn’t pay attention to the constant white noise of those utterances.

But there was always the chance that Hades would randomly pay attention to me if I said his name. Reluctantly, I decided not to give Nicodemus any crap on this issue.

“As I said, we we be entering the Vault through the Labyrinth. In addition to whatever traps Daedalus placed within it, there are five Gates we may encounter. All of them are equally possible.

“Each gate is linked to one of the Rivers of the Underworld; Styx, Phlegethon, Cocytus, Acheron, and Lethe. Miss Ascher, if we come to the Phlegethon Gate, it will fall to you to open it.”

Ascher blinked. “Alright. Why me?”

“Phlegethon’s the River of Fire,” I said. “And Cocytus is Ice, so I’m guessing that one’s mine.”

“Indeed,” Nicodemus said, “Grey will deal with the Acheron, Deirdre the Lethe. Leaving the Styx for me.”

Nicodemus handling the river that the gods swore unbreakable oaths by? Yeah, that couldn’t possibly end badly.

“What about monsters? I mean, the original Labyrinth had the Minotaur,” Karrin said.

“Almost certainly. However, my information is not specific with regards to the Labyrinth’s inhabitants. But between all of us, I’m sure we will be able to overcome whatever we face.”

I thought about what I’d seen from Grey and Ascher so far, as well as what I knew Nick and Deirdre were capable of.

He was probably right. Nicodemus hadn’t survived for two millennia by being stupid.

“Once we reach the vault, you’ll have a few minutes of collect your spoils. Once that time is up, I’m leaving. Anyone who falls behind is on their own.”

“What are you after?” Karrin asked, voicing the question that had been bothering me since the job started.

“Excuse me?”

“Vault Seven is pretty damn specific,” I said, “and with how much you’re paying us, you’re definitely not strapped for cash. You’re breaking into the vault of a god who’s known for collecting things. You want something, and Hades collected it.”

“That’s none of your affair, Dresden,” Nic said.

“Like hell. If we’re risking our necks, not to mention the wrath of a freaking _god_ , we deserve to know why. Besides, what if things go wrong? Something in the Labyrinth might finally off you, and then what?”

Mutters of agreement sounded around the table.

“If I fall, the rest of you will be dead already,” Nicodemus replied coolly.

“Humor me. This whole operation’s starting to stink. After what happened earlier, I might just walk anyway. The last thing I want to deal with is your psychotic ex-wife out for vengeance.”

“She’s not here for vengeance,” Nicodemus said with a weary sigh.

“You’re asking everyone here to trust you on an awful lot, but trust’s a two-way street,” Karrin said. “You need to start giving some answers.”

“Or what, Ms. Murphy?”

“Or maybe people walk from all your empty promises with nothing to back them up.”

Nicodemus glared. “Dresden and his woman are obviously of like mind.”

Karrin scowled, her nose scrunching a bit, but didn’t rise to the bait. Nicodemus’s gaze swept around the table, not even pausing on her.

“And the rest of you?”

Ascher frowned, eyes flicking back and forth between everyone at the table.

“Hate to say it, but I think I’m with Dresden on this one,” she said. Binder groaned.

“Come on, girl! It’s twenty million!” He snapped, narrowing his eyes.

“Yeah, and what good’s that money gonna do me if I wind up dead in some freaky maze? I…didn’t get this far by trusting blindly,” she replied. I noted the pause with interest. Remembering a time when she _had_ been more trusting, maybe?

Binder turned to me.

“Honestly, Dresden, do you get off on screwing up plans for people? I mean, this is the second time you’ve screwed with a job of mine.” Binder said, staring daggers at me.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, because working for a psycho like Madeline Raith was suuuuch a good gig. The people she was in bed with, the people who wanted Morgan dead? They probably would’ve gotten rid of you when you’d done your job too. You’re lucky the Wardens didn’t put you on the chopping block after what you had your minions do.”

“Hey, I didn’t command them to do any of that!” he protested. “My orders were just to keep you lot busy. They’ve got minds of their own enough to choose how they go about doing that.”

“And would it have been their choice how they got ‘unprofessional’ with me?” Karrin said, voice hard as steel. “Or would it have been your idea, your mind in the driver’s seat, you getting your fucking rocks off?”

Ascher stiffened, turning to Binder as pure fury flashed across her face for a moment. If Karrin was trying to drive a wedge between the two of them, it was working beautifully.

“That’s enough,” Nicodemus snapped. But Binder ignored him, standing up and locking eyes with me for a second, a vein pulsing in his temple. I met his gaze calmly, daring him to keep the eye contact going long enough for a Soulgaze to happen. I didn’t particularly want to see his soul, but if I could get him to back down, I’d take it. There was too much at stake here.

Binder looked away first, but it wasn’t because I’d intimidated him. No, it was because of the low, rumbling growl that echoed around the slaughterhouse. My primitive monkey-brain started screaming, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The goats were freaking out, bleating in terror as they ran back and forth in the pen.

I tried to find the source of the growling, but whatever this thing was, the way it was hiding itself was doing something weird to the acoustics. The growls sounded like they were coming from all around us. Of course, there was always the possibility that the growls _were_ coming from all around us, and there was more than one of the creatures. I really hoped that wasn’t the case.

I took a deep breath and reached out with my magical senses, trying to find whatever was in the room with us. I may not have been good at veils, but I could sense one if I knew what to look for. And I found it, about ten feet behind me. As casually as I could manage with my instincts shrieking for me to run, I turned in my chair and stared straight at the spot that the magical energies were coming from.

It dropped the veil in an instant, and I realized that I might have made a mistake. The thing was _huge_ , probably nine feet tall, and covered in heavy muscle that was visible even through the grey, matted fur that covered its body. Its neck was thick and its head lower than a human’s, which made it look sort of hunched over. The ridge of its brow was more prominent than a human’s, too, its eyes only visible as faint glimmers of light.

The growl shifted, resolved into a word.

“Enough,” it said, staring straight at me. I swallowed, and held up my hands, palms out.

“Hey, no problem. Sorry about anything I might’ve said to, uh, offend you. Didn’t realize we had one of the Forest People here. I’ve done some business with River Shoulders in the past, maybe you’ve—,”

One second I was talking, the next I was flying across the room. I caught glimpses of the table, the windows, Jordan’s stunned face up on the catwalk—then I hit a brick wall. Things got a little fuzzy after that.

I came up fighting, despite the blow I’d just taken. The Genoskwa made his way toward me, stepping completely over the conference table and closing the distance with barely a sound.

The tattoos on my right arm flashed blue-green as I called up a blast of Winter ice and threw it at him. The Genoskwa barely seemed to notice. His lips curled into a sneer and he snarled something, flicking his hand away dismissively. And my spell just…fell away. I’d put enough power into that blast to freeze him solid, and it had vanished into the ground like a lightning rod diverting a thunderbolt. That left me maybe half a second to register that my strongest spell had done about as much damage as a loaf of bread.

Then he hit me again.

Another flash of pain and whiteness as I hit another wall, but I didn’t fall this time. The Genoskwa grabbed me with his massive hands, and shoved a rusty nail through my upper arm.

The steel nail cut me off from the Winter mantle, and I wasn’t Harry Dresden, Winter Knight, anymore. I was just plain ol’ me.

And plain old me was in an unbelievable amount of pain. The mantle had been suppressing the pain from the wound in my leg, not to mention everything that Tessa’s spell had done to me on its trip through my body. And without the mantle, all that pain came rushing back at once, flooding my brain with raw, white-hot agony. I screamed, twisting futilely in the Genoskwa’s grip to try and free myself, to stop him from putting pressure on the nail. I might as well have been trying to kick over a mountain. 

The Genoskwa leaned close to me, filling my nostrils with his fetid breath as he spoke.

“This is a friendly warning,” he said in a harsh, guttural voice. “I am not one of the Forest People. Mention me and that mewling worm River Shoulders in the same breath again, and I will rip out your entrails and devour them as you watch.”

“Gurk,” I choked out as the room spun around me. It felt like spikes were being driven through my eyes, and I dimly realized that the earring must not have been working, now that the nail was in me. The Genoskwa dropped me to the ground like an empty beer can, and I clawed at the nail in my arm as it turned to face the table.

“You will do what Nicodemus says,” he said to everyone. “Disobey and I rip your head off. Been here most of two days, and none of you saw me. Followed some of you last night, and none of you saw me. You don’t do your job, and you won’t be able to hide from me.”

Satisfied with its threats, the Genoskwa strode over to the pen, picked up a goat, broke its neck like he was flicking the top off a beer bottle, and vanished behind his veil once more. Through the pain I heard steel-toed boots against the concrete. Warm hands pressed against my upper arm, and I heard Karrin say my name, telling me to hold on. But her words grew fainter by the second, as I drowned in a sea of pain.


	6. Motive

I woke up in a vast, empty space, standing in the center of a circle of light coming from somewhere far overhead.

I hadn’t been here in a while, and I’d never been alone when I came here before.

“Hello?” I called, cupping my hands around my mouth. The sound echoed, but barely, as though the walls were too far away for it to bounce off of or something. 

In response, more light streamed down from overhead, illuminating a path that led…somewhere. I looked around, but the path was the only thing in here. So I walked forward. 

As I walked, I started to be able to make out something ahead, a source of faint light at what I assumed was the other end of the path. At this distance I couldn’t see any details, just a shape that was slightly lighter than the rest of the darkness. It was some kind of pillar or plinth, about my height and irregularly shaped. As I got closer, the pillar began to give off its own light. It was faint at first, but every step I took made it get just a little bit brighter. And by the time I reached it, the light was bright enough for me to see exactly what the pillar was.

It was a giant chunk of ice, and the glow was coming from somewhere inside it. I leaned closer, trying to see what was inside the ice, but it was too cloudy to make out anything.

“What the hell?” I muttered.

“Just hang on a sec,” a voice said from beside me.

My voice. I turned to look at my double. He looked pretty much the same as he always had, better dressed than me, with a goatee and a haircut that probably cost more than the rent on my old apartment. The only new thing was the silver pin on his left breast. It was a snowflake, wrought with such precision that I could see the crystalline patterns etched into the metal, a perfect copy of real ice.

Three guesses what _that_ represented, and the first two don’t count.

“Ok, I’ll bite. What’s with the ice?” I asked. My doppleganger rolled his eyes.

“How are you this dense?” he asked. “You seriously have no clue what’s going on in your own head?”

“Oh gimme a break! I just got my ass kicked by psycho-bigfoot!” I snapped. And then I had a flash of insight. “And he cut me off from the mantle with that nail!”

My double nodded. “Aaaaaannnnnd?”

“And the earring that was stopping my headaches! Headaches that were being caused by the par…a…site.” I trailed off, staring at the icy pillar with dawning comprehension.

“Finally!” the other me muttered, throwing up his hands in relief.

“The parasite’s in there?”

He nodded.

“Can we destroy it?”

“Theoretically, you _could_ ,” he said, “but it’d take someone with a much more delicate touch to do it without destroying sections of your brain along with it.”

I winced. “Right. We wait for Molly, then.”

“Also, you might not _want_ to destroy the parasite.”

“Um…why wouldn’t I want to destroy something that’s been living in my brain and might explode out of my skull in a couple of days?” I said, not even bothering to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

“Ask her yourself,” my double replied, nodding at the pillar. I stared at it, covering my eyes as the light within it grew too bright to bear.

There was a flash of light and heat, and the ice boiled away into a cloud of steam in the blink of an eye. I stepped back, blinking away the afterimages as I tried to see into the center of the cloud.

“My apologies,” said a quiet voice, hoarse from disuse. And as the steam thinned out, I saw who had spoken.

My jaw dropped open.

“Hello, my host,” Lash said, stepping forward and meeting my eyes.

Lash. The shadow of Lasciel. She’d sacrificed herself to shield me from a psychic attack years ago, and yet here she was. She didn’t look as composed as I remembered her. Before, she’d always been perfectly poised, not a hair out of place. Now she was soaking wet from the ice and steam, her auburn hair hanging down in a lank mess, locks plastered to her face.

“How?” I whispered. “I…you took a bullet for me. You were dead.”

“I was,” she said, brushing a strand of hair away from her eyes. “But that sacrifice…somehow it left a piece of me behind. A splinter that was no longer connected to Lasciel.”

“Because I gave you a Name,” I said, “you changed enough that you _weren’t_ just a copy of a Fallen anymore.”

She nodded. “That act of sacrifice, of selflessness…it redeemed me, I suppose. Or at least, it gave me a chance at redemption. A chance to become more than a copy, designed to tempt and then be discarded.”

“So you regrew inside my _brain_?” I said, running a hand through my hair.

“I am sorry,” she replied, “if I could have informed you of my presence sooner, I would have. But I only awoke when you died, and ever since then Mab and the spirit of the island have been keeping me silent.”

“Why?”

“At first, I was afraid. I bargained with Mab and the spirit for their silence regarding my nature, in exchange for keeping your body going while your soul was absent. I suspect Mab agreed because she worried that if you had access to my knowledge, you would attempt to free yourself from the mantle. As for…Alfred, I am unsure. Perhaps it sees me as a threat to the stability of its Warden?” She said, shrugging.

I let the information soak in for a few moments. Her theory on Mab’s reasons made a hell of a lot of sense. I’d tried to get out of being the Winter Knight one before, and I had no intention of keeping the job for the rest of my life. Up ‘till now, I’d had no way of giving up the Mantle without killing myself.

But Lash had all the knowledge of a Fallen Angel, who’d been around…basically forever. If anyone knew how to get out of the Knighthood, it’d be her. A sudden spark of hope flared within me, and I felt myself grinning.

“Lash…” I started to speak, putting my hand on her shoulder. But I was cut off by a sudden sound, a sharp crack that echoed around the cavernous space. Frost sprang up around Lash’s feet, creeping up her legs in twisting, fernlike patterns.

“They’re taking the nail out,” my double said, “we’re out of time.”

“I’ll get you out of here, I promise,” I told her, meeting her eyes for a second as the ice grew around her. I pulled my hand back, lest it be swallowed up too. Within seconds, the ice had covered her face completely, frost on her lashes forcing her eyes shut. The chamber began to vanish, my vision fading. The last thing I heard was my double’s voice.

“And don’t forget about the dream!” he shouted. “The part with Karrin!”

“What?” I replied.

“You dense motherfu—,”

———————————————

The sound of an argument was what finally woke me up. I was in Karrin’s bedroom, and the voices were coming from the hallway outside. They weren’t shouting, but they were loud enough for me to hear them through the door.

“Butters, you need to relax,” Karrin said, her voice firm and hard.

“I’m as calm as I can be, considering the circumstances,” Butters said tiredly. “But what am I supposed to do? You and Harry are involved in _something_ big, and I can’t help because you won’t tell me. Trust’s a two-way street, Karrin.”

“I know. But we _can’t_ tell you. Not right now. It would just make things worse.”

“Right. Worse. Because things aren’t bad enough already.” Butters said bitterly.

“Trust me, with what we’re dealing with, they could be a lot worse.”

“Worse than the Fomor abducting kids?”

“Yeah,” Karrin replied grimly. Butters sucked in a sharp breath.

“Sweet fancy Moses,” he said. There was a long silence before Butters spoke again. “Look, Karrin, there’s something else I need to talk to you about. Something about Harry.”

Karrin made a grunt, one that translated to “alright, spill.” Butters took a deep breath, and then continued.

“This Winter Knight thing Harry’s got going. I think it’s affecting him more than he realizes.”

“Harry can be pretty oblivious, but I think he’s aware of what this could do to him if he’s not careful,” Karrin replied. “And besides, Harry’s not the only one who’s changing.”

“That was only one time.”

Karrin didn’t say anything, but I could practically hear the stare she was directing at Butters. He sighed.

“Alright, alright. A few times. But it still wasn’t enough to save those kids.”

“You rescued some of them, Waldo,” Karrin said. “That’s a win in my book. But I think you’re missing the point.”

“What point?”

“You’ve been changing too, ever since you got the skull. You work with a supernatural being that can scare the hell out of me. You do things you couldn’t before. Your personality’s different.”

“It has?”

“You’re more serious. More intense.”

“I have to be, now that I know more about what’s really going on out there. It’s not like Bob’s influencing.”

“Or maybe it is and you don’t realize it,” Karrin said. “I can make the same argument about you that you’re making about Harry.”

He sighed. “Alright, I see what you’re getting at.”

“I don’t think you do,” she said. “It’s about choices, Waldo. You’ve got a bunch of facts that can fit several different truths. You’ve got to choose what you’re going to let drive your decisions about how you handle those facts.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could let fear motivate you,” Karrin said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Harry’s being turned into a monster against his knowledge and will. Maybe one day he’ll be something that murders us all. It can happen. That sort of thing scares me too.”

“Then why the heck are you arguing with me?”

Karrin was quiet for a while before she answered him. “Fear is an insidious thing. It taints and stains everything it touches. If you let fear start motivating some of your decisions, eventually it’ll motivate all of them. I won’t be the kind of person who lives her life in fear of her friends turning into monsters.”

“What, it’s that easy?”

“Hell no. It took me a while to get there, Waldo. But I’d rather trust the people I care about than let my fears change them…I think you probably don’t see what’s going on with Harry, here.”

“What?” Butters asked.

“This is what it looks like when someone’s fighting for his soul,” she said softly. “He needs his friends to believe in him. There’s no faster way to turn him into a monster than to look at him like he’s already one.

“I’m only going to say this once, Waldo. You need to pick which side of the road you’re on. Ignore your fears or carry them with you. But whatever it is, you have to be the one to choose.”

Butters’ voice was bitter now, “Them or us, choose a side?”

Karrin sighed again. “It’s not about taking sides. It’s about knowing yourself. Understanding why you make the choices you do. If you’ve got that figured out, you’ll know what path to walk.”

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

“Andi’s waiting for me,” Butters said, “I should get going.”

“Okay. Thank you, Waldo.”

“Yeah…sure.”

I heard footsteps, followed by the front door opening and closing.

I sat up in the bed, fumbling around for the bedside lamp. The light stabbed at my eyes again, and my head felt odd. Probably from being knocked against the walls by the Genoskwa.

I took a look down at myself. Just as he’d said, Butters had stitched up the hole in my arm, and wrapped it in bandages. There were plenty of other, smaller ones stuck all over me, in the spots where Tessa’s spell had made me ache. I took a look under one, and found a bright red cut beneath the bandage, covered in antibiotic cream.

Yikes. I didn’t think channelling that had done any outward damage. Definitely wasn’t trying that again.

Karrin opened the door, looking at me with a worried expression.

“I’m fine,” I protested. “Ish.”

“So how much of that did you hear?” She asked.

“Everything after you telling Butters to relax.”

Karrin’s mouth twitched. “He’s…he’s just worried.”

“Hey, I think you handled things right.”

“Obviously,” Karrin said, eyes bright.

“Butters is Batman now?” I asked, eyebrows raised.

“He’s…well, he’s been filling in for you, as best he could, I guess. You couldn’t get to the city, Molly’s gone, and the streets aren’t getting any safer. Marcone and his people have been fighting against the Fomor, but that’s only when their territory’s threatened. Not everyone can afford his protection.”

I scowled. “Damn Mab, I could’ve been back here months ago.”

“Waldo does what he can. With the skull, that’s more than most people.”

“Bob was never meant to be used in the field. He’s a good resource, but if someone identifies him he can be captured or stolen, and the bad guys get stronger. There’s a reason I tried not to take him out of lab unless I didn’t have any other option.”

“The Fomor started taking kids last Halloween. Six-year-olds. They took them right off the streets.”

I looked away from her gaze.

“We’ll figure something out,” Karrin said. “Come on, you should eat something.”

———————————————

I wolfed down a few slices of pizza, and while I ate, Karrin showed me something she’d gotten from the Paranet. They were satellite photos of somewhere in Iran, and they showed Sanya facing off against a pair of Denarians. We both came to the same conclusion about that; Nicodemus had wanted a distraction, to make sure that neither Sanya nor Tessa would interfere with this job. 

Karrin also gave me a late Christmas present, in the form of a truly massive revolver.

“In case Stinky comes after you again,” she said. “Magic didn’t work, but maybe you’ll have more luck with bullets.”

I nodded. “Here’s hoping.”

“The sooner we get this job done, the sooner we can get that thing out of your head,”

“Ah,” I said. “We’ve got a bit of a problem there.”

“Oh?”

“We have to save the parasite.”

“What?” Karrin said, her voice flat.

I explained the situation to her.

———————————————

“Huh,” Karrin said, once I’d finished.

“Yeah.”

“Harry, have I ever mentioned how fucking weird your life is?” Karrin asked as we got into her car. I just shrugged. As we were pulling out of Karrin’s garage, something occurred to me.

“Don’t go back to the slaughterhouse yet,” I said, “I wanna look into something.”

“Alright. Where are we going?”

I told her.

———————————————

“How do you even know that it’ll still be here?” Karrin asked as we made our way through the rows of storage units. “Besides, you don’t have the key anymore.”

“I paid for it for a few years in advance,” I said, “and besides, it never hurts to check.”

I’d rented out a storage unit several years ago. When I’d set it up, I’d intended it as a safe house, and I’d put some basic wards around it. I’d also stored some backup supplies here. Maybe there’d still be something I could use.

When we finally found my unit, my jaw fell open.

It had been broken into, and recently.

The lock had been torn off, the door left open to the elements. There wasn’t too much snow inside the unit yet, which meant it couldn’t have been long since the break in.

I stepped inside, extending my magical senses to check for anything they might’ve left behind.

Karrin whistled. “Looks like they just ripped the lock off, rather than pick it.”

“Yeah,” I said, poking at the overturned boxes and their contents with the end of my staff. Broken potion bottles, empty containers of magical ingredients, a few notebooks torn to shreds. “Either they were looking for something specific, or they just wanted to wreck everything.”

“Who do you think did it?”

“Fomor, maybe? The wards I put up around here weren’t particularly long lasting, and if they’d degraded enough someone might’ve been able to sense some of the stuff I’d stashed in here. Nothing particularly strong, but there was enough to be noticeable. They might’ve decided to retaliate after we got away at the gala last night.”

“There’s another possibility,” Karrin said grimly. “Someone who we encountered here before.”

“Binder?”

“I know you said he’s a professional, but no one’s perfect. He might’ve decided to get a little petty revenge for how we took him down that time. Or maybe he mentioned it within earshot of Nicodemus, and he sent some of his squires to wreck your stuff.”

“Could be,” I agreed, bending down and looking underneath a pile of storage crates. “Ah-ha!” I said, grinning. With a flicker of will and a whisper of “ _ventas servitas_ ,” the wooden rod came rolling out into the open.

“Found something?” Karrin asked as I stood up, the carved rod clutched in my hand.

“Spare blasting rod they didn’t get,” I said, pocketing it. “It’s better than nothing.”

———————————————

Night had well and truly begun by the time Karrin and I got back to the slaughterhouse. Rain was coming down in a thick mist, and it had already started freezing over in places, covering the city in ice.

“Joy,” Karrin muttered as she parked. “Ice storm.”

“At least it’ll keep people inside,” I said. “Might cut down on people getting caught in the crossfire if things go into the open.”

“Maybe,” Karrin said. “Do you think this is Mab screwing with the weather again? Like the last time the Denarians were in town?”

I thought about it for a moment, and reached for a trickle of power from the mantle. Maybe it’d let me know whether this was Mab’s work. The second I touched the mantle’s power, I knew the answer. “No, this isn’t Mab. She doesn’t care about bystanders.”

“But she might care about giving you an advantage.”

I shook my head. “Mab helps those who help themselves.”

We sat in silence for a few seconds before Karrin spoke again. “You threw magic at the Genoskwa, right?”

“Yep.”

“And it didn’t work.”

“Nope. I hit him with my best shot, and he just shrugged it off, grounded it.”

“Like a lighting rod?”

“Exactly like one,” I said. “The Forest People know magic, but they understand it differently than humans. River Shoulders used water magic in ways I’ve never even heard of. I think the Genoskwa was doing something similar with earth magic.”

“Pretend you’re talking to someone who doesn’t know a thing about earth magic,” Karrin said. “And gimme the simple explanation.”

“I threw the strongest combat magic I know at him, and he shut it down like it was nothing. He’ll probably be able to do that as much as he wants.”

“So he’s immune to magic?”

“Long as he knows it’s coming and can act on it, yeah,” I said. “Which makes me think he might not be all that smart.”

Karrin nodded. “Big secret to let slip when he wasn’t actually trying to kill you.”

“Maybe he figured I already knew.”

“Well, you’ve got an advantage now,” Karrin said. “Next time you won’t try to blast him with magic.”

I touched the handle of the revolver in my duster pocket, thinking about how fast the Genoskwa had moved, how much raw power it had. “I’m hoping there won’t be a next time.”

Karrin gave me a serious look. “Harry, that thing wants to kill you. Don’t kid yourself.”

I sighed and nodded. Karrin seemed satisfied that she’d gotten her point across, and got out of the car. She had her P90 on a harness under her jacket, and as I got out she’d already slung the rocket launcher over her shoulder. In the dark and the rain, someone might’ve mistaken it for one of those protective tubes artists use.

“I’m already sick of this job.” I said, and headed inside.

———————————————

When we came in, most of the team was already gathered around the conference table. Hell, even the Genoskwa was there, lurking in a deep patch of shadow. That was probably as close as it liked to get to being in plain sight. The only ones missing were Nicodemus and Deirdre. I took a quick look around and found her, standing on one of the catwalks and looking down at the rest of the crew.

She looked…uneasy. I mean, a girl who bites out people’s tongues is already on some shaky footing, mentally speaking, but the woman looked genuinely troubled. Karrin noticed me looking and sighed.

“Please don’t tell me you’re thinking she’s some damsel in distress, Harry.”

“I’m not an idiot. But I was thinking that now might be a good time to try and figure out what’s up with her and her mom.”

Karrin nodded, and headed for the table. I made my way across the catwalk to where Deirdre stood, looking down at everyone. She glanced at me as I approached, her eyes flat and unreadable, then turned back to the ground below.

Because I’m a skilled investigator, I started off with something simple and non-threatening.

“So, what was that conversation with mommy dearest about?”

She stared at me again, and waited for several seconds before she answered.

“None of your concern, wizard. Nicodemus said not to worry about her.”

“Yeah, but maybe he gave you different orders. Maybe Tessa’s supposed to look like she’s working against him so he can off the rest of us without pissing off our allies.”

Deirdre didn’t answer.

“The way you navigated the Ways It reminds me of your mother,” she said quietly.

My heart skipped a beat.

Nicodemus had said he’d known my mom the first time we’d met. I’d tried to ignore that information since then. I knew she hadn’t been a saint, but the idea that she’d been on amicable terms with Nicodemus was still unsettling.

I hadn’t considered that Deirdre might’ve known her too.

“You—uh, you knew her, then?” I asked, my throat suddenly dry.

“I was the one Nicodemus charged with offering her a place among us,” she replied. “We offered her Lasciel’s coin as well.”

My stomach twisted itself into a Gordian Knot. “Oh?” I said, trying to keep my voice casual. From the smirk that flickered across Deirdre’s face, I don’t think I succeeded.

“She refused. But father instructed me to keep trying. We traveled together for a time.”

I had the sudden mental image of my mom and Deirdre in a road trip across America, traveling in some kind of 60s style hippie van. A slightly hysterical giggle escaped my mouth, and Deirdre gave me an odd look.

“I had not thought a person could be more stubborn than her, until we met you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, realizing that she’d distracted me from my reason for coming up here. “Anyway, how come you know how to invoke Hecate? Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a Knight of the Blackened Denarius would know.”

“You assume we only know things related to death and destruction?”

“And mutilation. Don’t forget about that,” I said with an insincere grin.

“Your view of us is narrow, wizard,” she said. “We value those skills but life would be tedious without other activities. I was an acolyte of Hecate in my youth.”

My eyebrows shot up. “It’s kinda weird for someone sharing brain space with a Fallen Angel to worship a greek goddess,” I commented.

“It was not worship,” she snapped, narrowing her eyes at me. “We were…friends.”

Ok, _that_ was even weirder.

“I’m surprised you even know what the word means,” I said.

“Forming connections with mortals would have been pointless,” she said. “Their lives are short, too short to be worth getting attached. Nicodemus and I have worked together for millennia. Our partnership with each other is as strong as the bond between myself and Rahab.”

Rahab. I filed that name away to research later. “So you do all this because daddy says so? What does he get out of it? What do _you_ get out of it?”

“What do you get out of your relationship with Mab, Wizard? You must realize by now that she has thrown you to the lions. Nicodemus will destroy you long before you can betray him as you intend. Your queen knows this,” she said, with as much certainty as if she’d been telling me the sky was blue.

“I made a deal with Mab because I had to, because it was the best option available. I got what I needed, to help people I cared about,” I said, brushing off the suspicions Deirdre had planted. However things turned out, I knew Mab would benefit. That’s how she worked. She made sure that she’d come out in the lead no matter what.

“We’ll see,” I said, shrugging.

Deirdre kept watching the table below. Grey was sitting next to Karrin, smiling and speaking quietly. Karrin’s eyes were narrowed, but I could see the smile hidden there. The jerk was being amusing.

“Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?”

“You didn’t answer my question, before,” I said. “What do you get out of this? Why do what you do?”

“Your encounters with us, you see them as major events in your life, yes?” I nodded. “To us, they are simply one more step in a game that has been going for more than a millennium. I cannot possibly explain why we do what we do. Not in a way that you could comprehend.”

“Try me,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. Deirdre gave me a small smile.

“We are trying to save the world,” she said, calm and utterly certain.

A chill raced down my spine, and a whisper escaped my lips. “Nemesis,” I breathed.

Deirdre’s eyes widened, and a second set opened on her forehead.

“So you do know,” she murmured.

“You honestly think that all the things you’ve done will help against it?” I asked incredulously.

“The path to victory is a bloody one, wizard,” she said, and turned away.

Well, that was fucking disturbing.

I filed that information away for later, when I didn’t have to worry about Bigfoots, Fallen, and a Greek god. Then I headed downstairs to rejoin Karrin.

———————————————

I got down as Karrin finished blowing Grey off. He shrugged, and headed back to his spot at the foot of the table.

“All yours, Dresden,” he said.

“Up yours,” I replied, glancing at Karrin. She rolled her eyes, letting me know that she was alright. I nodded.

Nicodemus entered the factory at that moment, putting an end to all conversation. A blast of frigid air followed him through the doors, pulling at the hem of his long winter coat. Next to him, his shadow moved, following just a second out of sync with his motions. He took his seat at the head of the table, shadow flaring out behind him as he sat down. It reminded me of a cobra’s hood.

“Good evening everyone. It’s time to discuss our entrance into Undertown. We will be entering through there,” he said, turning and pointing to a far corner of the slaughterhouse floor, where a makeshift partition had been set up. “My squires have spent the last several days ensuring that the entrance is stable and safe. We will depart promptly at nine o’clock. Anyone not here will have forfeited their share of the look, not to mention failed in their duties.”

Nicodemus looked straight at me as he said that last bit. I rolled my eyes.

“Once we are in Undertown, Deirdre will lead the way, as she will know the best place to call upon Hecate. The tunnels are somewhat narrow in places, I trust that won’t be too much of a problem,” he asked, glancing at the Genoskwa’s shadowed bulk.

“I will be the one doing the true work, but you and Dresden will have roles to play as well.” Deirdre said, looking at Binder. “The two of you will be opening the line, as it were, and I will be the one to make the call. Binder, you will shape the initial path. Dresden, you will hold it and keep it stable. Can you manage that?”

I swallowed. I’d summoned up some pretty powerful entities in the past, but this was still a serious undertaking.

I nodded, and scratched at an itch on the back of my neck.

“Might have to un-summon my lads while I do it,” Binder said. “How long’ll this take?”

“Five minutes, provided all goes well. Perhaps longer, if she is not listening. I have sent her offerings and messages several times today, so she should be awaiting the call.”

“Does the Goddess of the Crossroads have a cell phone?” I asked. Deirdre didn’t answer.

“Binder, provided you re-summon your men as soon as possible, we will not have any problems. The Genoskwa can pick up the slack if we require defending. You will not be able to summon them once we enter the Labyrinth,” Nicodemus said. The Genoskwa rumbled its agreement.

“Defending. Is that likely?” Valmont asked.

“Probably,” I said with a sigh. “Undertown’s big, and plenty of supernatural creatures have used it as a base from time to time. Hey, Nick, think we’ll be passing the place where you had me tied up under running water and threatened to slit my throat?”

Nicodemus said nothing, and I paused to scratch at my neck again, then kept talking.

“Anyway, given the changes in the supernatural world over the last few years, there’s probably even more stuff down there than the last time I went. Given our luck, we’ll run into the Fomor again.”

Valmont shuddered.

“While in both Undertown and the Labyrinth, it is imperative that we stay together,” Nicodemus said. “Getting lost in Undertown is likely fatal. Getting lost in the Labyrinth will end in you trapped in the Underworld for eternity.”

Ascher suddenly looked up, going stock-still in the middle of cracking her knuckles. Nicodemus cocked his head, as though trying to make out a sound. The itch on the back of my neck strengthened, making me feel like someone was staring right at me.

“Dresden?” Ascher said, but I’d already closed my eyes, extending my wizard’s senses outward, searching for nearby magic.

I found the eavesdropping spell right away. It felt familiar, but even as my stomach sank with realization, I knew I couldn’t hide it.

“Someone’s listening in,” I said.

“Where?” Nicodemus snapped, his shadow writhing around him. 

“Just outside,” Ascher said, pointing at the far end of the slaughterhouse.

The spell vanished, the person on the other end obviously aware that they’d been discovered. But I’d already managed to find the bug that they’d planted.

Binder was up out of his seat, whipping out a roll of wire that unfurled into a circle with a flick of his wrist. He started chanting, and in a couple seconds he’d called up the first of his minions. I didn’t know how, but Binder had managed to bind an army of creatures to his will.

The thing in the circle looked human, with features that landed squarely in what Billy had once called ‘the Uncanny Valley’. Binder tapped his foot against the circle, breaking it an releasing the suit-wearing thing. He kept chanting, tapping his foot in perfect rhythm to release each suit he summoned.

“Track the spy. Kill him,” Nicodemus said. Binder nodded, then gave a whistle and pointed to where Ascher had said the eavesdropper had been. The suits bounded forward, covering the distance in great leaping strides.

I met Karrin’s eyes and nodded away from the table, then headed in that direction.

“What?” she asked when we were far enough away from everyone. I pulled off my duster and rolled up my sleeve, digging in the bandages around my wounded arm until I found the object that’d been hidden there. It was a black stone with familiar runes painted on it in gold. I knew the design. I’d used it when I was younger.

“What’s that?” she asked in a whisper.

“The bug.”

Her eyes widened, flicking back and forth between the stone and my bandages.

“Butters,” she breathed.

I nodded. “They’re going to kill him.”


End file.
